Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree completely that there is an onus on all of us to ensure information gets out to the organisations and that those relationships are made. I have seen where some of the smaller pieces of work have been done. The SEUBP and whoever else have made connections with some organisations. In some cases, it is about redirecting them and pointing out that this does not necessarily suit them but it might suit others or a conglomerate of local organisations. Sometimes the local GAA club might think this is another means of getting funding. That is fine, but it is not necessarily what this is for.

I wish to put this on the record and I do not necessarily expect a reply. I was very close to Kevin Mulgrew, someone we lost in recent months. He was very involved in Coiste na nIarchimí, the ex-prisoner network, and Fáilte Abhaile in Dundalk. He would probably have felt that PEACEPLUS and what was being planned would not fulfil some of the other work that had been done previously by the PEACE project as regards the ex-prisoner network and continuing some of the issues that still impact on former political prisoners, their families and communities as well as those who were forced to move jurisdictions as a result of the conflict and whatever else. That is where that is.

As the Minister said previously, there has always been a particular problem with projects even through local authorities with the desperate levels of bureaucracy relating to European money and specifically PEACE money. I had a meeting with the SEUBP at which it was stated that there were two problems when these are run through a local authority or whatever. Sometimes when tendering, excessive criteria were put in which then had to be adhered to. Sometimes there was a misread by the local authority and they were nearly tougher than what one would experience from the SEUBP or at EU level. We need to deal with that and ensure we avoid a recurrence. That said, we still obviously need top levels of governance, accountability and all the rest. We do not need to bring it to the realms of farce by, for example, accounting for every individual light bulb bought, which has occurred over the years.