Ms Rose Power:

In each of the regional assemblies, we currently have EU project officers who are dedicated to EU projects and they are funded through EU projects. Therefore, outside of those projects, we do not have a dedicated person who is funded specifically for the purpose of engaging with the community. What we are all trying to do is allocate some of our limited time across a number of people to provide a service. What we do in the southern region is provide an in-person ETC meeting where we talk about all of the different programmes and what is available. We probably have the capacity to do that once a year currently and, outside of that, we do online events. We have about 200 members in our ETC network, and that is across the local authority sector, third level and civil society, so it is open to everybody. In addition, at each of our monthly assembly meetings, an update is provided to our members, who are elected members, telling them what EU funding calls are coming about, what areas of interest might be there and what opportunities are there.

With very limited resources at the regional assembly level, we inform our members and inform all of the members of our ETC network, which includes all of the local authorities. We keep them informed of what is going on and then we do a physical event across all of the schemes that are available, which they are invited to attend on an annual basis. We get in expert speakers in regard to different aspects and we also provide capacity building and one-to-one advice on managing a project once it has been secured. We get in experts from our first-level controller and the auditors of these EU projects to talk to them on a one-to-one basis.

That is what we have done up to now and we are put to the pin of our collar with the resources we have available. Would we welcome another EU policy officer who is available in our regions to assist the wider community? Absolutely.