Ms Gina McIntyre:

The thing about 1.4 is that the programme is effectively running two years behind schedule. All of the programmes across Europe are a year behind - they are always a year behind by the time they are approved. This one has an additional delay because of the finance agreement that was being put in place between the UK and the EU, along with Ireland. When we looked at the capital projects - as we referred to earlier - we had to learn lessons from the current programmes. One of the lessons was that if the project does not have its planning permission in place or its site aligned already, we know it is not going to achieve the capital build within timeframe. As a result, we had to put certain criteria in place for things like "planning site established" to make sure we could actually spend the money.

Groups in Louth should talk to the council. Each council has been given a sizeable allocation. We started with a baseline where we gave each council €1 million. For example, Sligo County Council, which covers quite a big area, did not end up getting as much money as some of the other councils, based on the deprivation of population index. We learned from that and gave each council €1 million and then the additional allocation on top of that. They all have a good allocation and I would strongly recommend that people speak to them. There is room for a small element of capital building within the council local action plans as well if there is a driving need for it. In some of the other areas we can co-partner. We can pay for the activities in a project if people can get the capital somewhere else.