Mr. Andrew McGuinness:

Senator O'Loughlin had another question on how the regional assemblies work well with their local authorities and how we work in providing local community groups and so on with the appropriate tools and information to apply for the various funding streams. I believe that we have fantastic working relationship. I can only speak for Kilkenny County Council and the Southern Regional Assembly but there is room for improvement. Each local authority should have a liaison officer working with it and working between the local authority and the assemblies and the relevant groups that would be interested in different funding streams, to be able to point them in the right direction. We are lacking in that regard but the onus for this is on the local authorities themselves and goes back to central government in terms of funding, because these positions would have to be funded as well. We would benefit greatly right across the country by having that in place and we would see more projects funded more quickly and more easily if we were able to do that. In general, at the moment, we are working quite well but it could be a lot better.