Ms Sheenagh Rooney:

I will clarify that. There were a number of projects that were unsuccessful in the first call that have gone on to be successful in the second call because they received feedback. People do take the feedback on board. We have received information that feedback was taken on board and that the issues outstanding were addressed. Subsequently, those concerned were successful in receiving funding. That is not in all cases but in some.

With regard to shovel-ready projects, it is a matter of all consents being in place. That is in advance of procurement. The Department must go through two important stages. Once someone is announced as successful, that just implies funding in principle. We then have to engage in a due diligence process. Then the applicant must come back to us with the procurement cost, and then we sign a contract with them. That is to protect Exchequer funding and to do things in the right way. Afterwards, payment is linked to milestone delivery. It can be the case for some projects, given their scale and the fact that delivery will be over a number of years, that procurement takes longer.

It took some time to get the due diligence process and contractual arrangements set up but it was important for us to do that because taxpayers' money is involved. Now that we have done this, we are beginning to see delivery on projects and expenditure. There is momentum and we expect it only to increase. We are delivering all the time on a pipeline of projects and there is a ten-year investment programme. I highlighted already that the expenditure to date is up by €21 million. We would expect that to ramp up significantly. We are seeing progress but we understand the reasons it has taken a little time. It was because we wanted to do things the right way.

There was a query on philanthropic funding. We are very open to LEADER companies becoming increasingly involved. They are involved somewhat but we appreciate that local authorities are still in the majority. We will provide more detailed information on that to the committee. When we were setting up the design of the scheme, we were keen to see projects that had philanthropic donations succeed as part of their matched funding.

Admittedly, to date, and we are only in the early stages, it has been small. There are six examples of projects with matching funding from philanthropic sources, including the Tomar Trust, that have been successful. They amount to almost €6 million. I appreciate it is a small start but that is the direction of travel we want to see. One of the Department's responsibilities is in this area and we are developing a strategy on this, so it is something on which we are very keen to see progress.