Ms Emma Murtagh:

I will just mention that the Changing Lives Initiative was actually supported by the first phase of Access Europe so I probably worked directly with Deputy Ó Murchú's wife at one point on that. A capacity-building programme like Access Europe is an excellent one that tries to give people the capacity, tools and support they need to go through what is often a really maddening process of bureaucracy and barrier after barrier. It is a great thing, but to properly address the issues of access we need to make it more streamlined and accessible.

I understand that transparency is essential and that we need to ensure the best levels of governance and also ensure that we are spending money in the right and most impactful way, but there are other ways that we can go. There are existing European programmes that have proven that we can go towards a lump-sum model. They are working incredibly well. They are saving administrative costs at both ends of the spectrum. I used to manage programmes that were in the same kind of system and reporting on every receipt for every cup of coffee. I used to do that. I reported to Brussels and there was some civil servant sitting in Brussels who then had to go and check all of that. Now the programme that I used to manage has moved entirely to a lump-sum system. It is saving money and it is streamlining at both ends of the scale.

We kind of over-corrected towards excessive levels of bureaucracy in an effort to make sure that we were being as transparent as possible but we can now look at it in a more informed way and ask what we can cut away that is not adding any quality and is only adding barriers. We can use examples of other European countries when it comes to the match funding. Even here in Ireland the Arts Council has a match funding facility for Creative Europe. We could replicate that at national level or look at our European counterparts. We can also look towards European programmes that have already been streamlined and see what we can learn from them. I think that would be a very positive step.