Ms Emily Murtagh:

I know €12 million in the grand scheme of EU funding might not seem hugely impressive, especially when one hears of INTERREG projects of multi-million euro each and Special EU Programmes Body, SEUPB, projects. I would emphasise these are largely community groups. Our target figures in terms of the millions of euro we were seeking to drawdown was almost secondary to the fact that our main target was 50% organisations which were new to EU funding. Much of the time, the starting point for organisations to begin cultivating the capacity to go for the larger programmes starts with a €30,000 grant from Erasmus+ to start building that capacity gradually. We are very much focused on establishing a culture of EU participation and letting organisations gradually get started and scale their way up through larger projects. They might start with something like Erasmus or the Citizenship, Equality, Rights and Values Programme, CERV, which are smaller grants. They are a big deal to community groups - it is a huge amount of money for a community group - but relatively small fry in the EU funding world. Without barriers such as match funding they can progress through the various programmes and be able to compete in projects such as INTERREG and PEACE and even Horizon, which are bigger programmes. It is important to emphasise that the goal of the programme is more about supporting entry-level applicants rather than pursuing the bigger, more ambitious pots of funding.

EU officers would be excellent. A few local authorities have these. For them to work with smaller groups, particularly voluntary groups which might not be legal entities and would not be able to apply for EU funding, they could take the social innovation from communities and shoulder some of the administrative and financial burden that comes with pre-financing, application processes and so on. That would be a great benefit to the community sector.