Ms Róisín O'Grady:

The key part of the 2016 programme was that a lot of public consultation was done at the start, so we were aware there was interest in communities to take on projects. That funding supported key projects, for example, Cloughjordan had a commemoration for Thomas MacDonagh and the libraries produced a booklet. The rest of the funding was administered in a grant scheme to community groups. We put out a call for them to submit projects that were in line with the theme of the commemoration and we administered grants in both 2015 and 2016 for commemorative projects, which were hugely successful. We would have had upwards of 25 applications per year, so there was huge interest.