Seán Haughey (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Tony Murphy and his team. It is good to see them at our committee again. It is interesting to see that Ireland is a net contributor of €229 million to the EU. We all knew that was the case in recent years but it is interesting and no doubt it will increase in future, all things considered. My first question is a throwback to one from the Chairman of this committee in the last Dáil, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae.

I recall him quizzing Mr. Murphy about grant application forms, criticising the jargon on them, the amount of information sought, the fact that they are not very citizen-friendly and so on. I appreciate that auditors have their job to do but is there any recognition of this problem? Many citizens do not have master's degrees and so forth in applying for various forms of funding, particularly, I suggest, farm payments. Is Mr. Murphy aware of the conflict between the need for efficiency and avoidance of fraud on the one hand and making these grant schemes accessible, from a form-filling perspective, on the other?

As other speakers said, NextGenerationEU is unprecedented. It is a major European Union initiative and is groundbreaking in many respects. Mr. Murphy stated that the European Court of Auditors is developing an audit strategy for NextGenerationEU. Presumably he will say that his organisation will have the capacity and resources to take on this challenge but I ask him to expand on that a little more. What work is being done in that regard? Is Mr. Murphy confident that the European Court of Auditors will be able to monitor, audit and keep close control of NextGenerationEU funding?