Ms Siobhán Finn:

To sum up what we have been talking about today, it goes back to what the Leas-Chathaoirleach said. The scheme has been designed to take a top-down approach. The individuals at the coalface of the sector and those, like some of my colleagues here, who are potential applicants to the scheme need to be involved in the design, not dissimilar to what has been said about the SME test. It is exactly the same issue. The application process for the smart regions scheme is laborious and administratively heavy and it has significant issues around match funding requirements, de minimis pass-through and inconsistent language. The lack of clarity is a huge challenge for applicants. From start to finish, it is an extremely cumbersome, unwieldy and unfit-for-purpose scheme.