Ms Gina McIntyre:

We have many masters, namely, the European Commission, the Irish Government, the executive when it is there and the Northern Ireland Office, NIO, of the UK Government, which is now much more involved because it has put in UK money through the EU programme. When we were designing the programme, it was based on a socioeconomic needs analysis for the region, but everything had to align to government policy, that is, all those different government policies. I refer to this as a Venn diagram of all those policies, and the bits that overlapped were where we designed PEACEPLUS. That is the content of the programme, carried out very much in conjunction with all the partners involved, all of whom had to approve it through respective government agencies. Our sponsoring Departments, namely, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, are represented at this meeting to give support, not to keep a watchful eye. They are in daily contact regarding the governance of the programme, and we work with all the Departments, North and South, that partner up on different areas of the programme. The money and the policy direction come through them and we constantly report back to them.