Ms Katie Lowry:

I thank the Senator for his question. It is really the hundred million euro question. This is the core of our work and it is great to be able to speak to that. Under the past programmes, Ireland's participation has constantly been increasing, which has been great to see. If we look at the latest programme across co-operation projects, which is the main funding strand, and support for European platforms for emerging artists and literary translation, 80 projects received funding, representing 78 Irish organisations. This was a significant result and in cash terms it is approximately €5.2 million. The main profile for Ireland's participation for as long as I have been in the job has been as a partner. When one talks about a lead and a partner, a lead is really an administrative lead but the partnership is considered an equal artistic partnership by the Commission. It is important to emphasise that. There has been a lot of alignment here nationally, and Ms Tunney can speak to this later, among funding agencies in terms of policy or strategic priorities that are aligning quite clearly with what Creative Europe wants to fund, so Ireland is very well positioned.

Regarding some of the main barriers, historically these are large-scale partnership projects that require match funding and that has always been a barrier. My colleague, Ms O'Callaghan, from the Arts Council, can speak to Arts Council supports, but one of the key innovations of the new programme that is going to be significant is that the Commission has raised the amount that it will put into a project. The maximum for the small scale, for example, would be 80%, so now an Irish organisation might only have to raise 20% of the budget. That is significant. Overall, European funding is bureaucratic, as many of the committee members probably have experience with either themselves or through their network of contacts. It is a technical process. Applications take a lot of work and a long time, and capacity is an issue. That is one that we work to a lot in the Creative Europe desk.

In Ireland, there will be organisations applying to take part in and deliver pan-European projects, but they are also delivering significant volumes of national work to their base here. Capacity is an issue and we work a lot on that in the desk with our clients. One of the things we always tell people is that if they want to take part in a European project as a small or micro arts, culture or heritage organisation, they need to start working it into their longer-term planning and talk to their board and their funders. If somebody is going to make an application under the Creative Europe culture strand, it will probably take at least a year. It involves long-term planning and assessing honestly one's own resources and seeing how they can be apportioned or allocated to a European project. That is a lot of our work. On the technical side of the process, that is what we are funded to do. On an ongoing basis we will give a great deal of one-to-one support around the deadline and going through applications with people, but we also run technical workshops.

One of the things is that our geographical position makes it inherently more difficult to mount one of these projects. We are not based in the centre of Europe. We are three or four countries and a train journey away, so that is an issue. We found during the Covid-19 crisis that networking and partner searching is happening virtually, which has been brilliant.

The other thing that enables organisations in the arts and culture sector to get funding is that we have quite a strong infrastructure of arts centres, venues and funded organisations. In 2016, it was brilliant to see that the Arts Council piloted a Creative Europe co-funding award. Within the Creative Europe programme and all the countries taking part, you find that a number of them have dedicated funds for organisations that achieve Creative Europe funding. The Arts Council created that fund in 2016, not only to support organisations that have achieved the funding but also to act as an incentive to help organisations start to imagine these types of projects.