Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. PEACE funding is something that I am familiar with over the years because I come from the Border County of Cavan and have been involved with community groups in the past that have accessed such funding. As Deputy Smith referred to, Cavan County Council had quite a number of applications. Its biggest problem was it had too many applications. While some may not have fitted the criteria, even when those were weeded out some were looking for quite substantial amounts of money. I acknowledge they tried to look at other funders to come in as well as with the big projects, there is no point in giving them a certain allocation and hoping they get the funding otherwise. It must be ensured they get the full amount of funding going forward. I wish to ask Ms McIntyre a number of questions. At the beginning of her statement, she referred to a number of projects that were not completed from the last round of PEACE funding and that have activity to complete in 2024, which they are doing at their own expense. Am I correct in understanding that such projects cannot apply for PEACEPLUS funding to be completed? Yes. That might be difficult for some of those projects.