Ms Gillian Coughlan:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta as an gceist iontach sin. An example of something that has worked very well in Cork city, which I mentioned last week, was the Mary Elmes Bridge. Every time I walk over it I say to whoever I am walking over it with that it was funded by European money. It is a footbridge over the River Lee and I think that funding was put in place because Cork city has the European funding officer and that is why the cogs were brought together.

Last week the president of the Committee of the Regions and I met the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, and he is certainly very receptive, especially regarding cohesion, but he also understood this is a bigger picture as regards our participation in the European project. As I mentioned last week, we are not seeing the European Union flag on our signs anymore because we are a net contributor, perhaps, but there are projects that are funded by the European Union. The visuals, the signage, the information and the dissemination of that information that this is Europe at work for you is very important. For the six of us, as local authority members, being here is very important. Anybody who has been on a local authority knows the County and City Management Association wields a lot of power. My very effective chief executive has asked me whether I know of any funds to do with coastal erosion. Cork is a big coastal county and we are constantly battling coastal erosion. It is about trying to marry the expertise from the region to the local and back through the Oireachtas.

I said it last week as well but the Seanad in particular, because it is elected by county councillors in the main, has the potential to have a really strong European dimension, with the regional assemblies. In my fairy tale of this there would be some directly-elected regional assembly members with some of them being elected to the Seanad and they would be specialists in regional government and would be on this committee, for example. There would be that level of legitimacy through the government. It would be your job to represent your region in the Seanad and in the Oireachtas. It would bring the European dimension into further focus in the Oireachtas. We are dealing with the real world and I accept that, but in answer to the Deputy’s question about whether anybody had that in front of them, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, did last week. He gets the cohesion question. We are at a very critical point in that with Ireland taking on the Presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2026. The agendas are being set out now and we will have power to move the dial on that agenda. I am asking the committee, as Members of the Oireachtas, to keep that on the agenda. I hope members are persuaded it is very important to keep those two funds separate. As a peripheral island it should be our primary ask, not only for us but the many regions across Europe that will benefit for cohesion policy. As Kata Tütt said here last week, the cohesion budget is not astronomical. It is not a huge amount of money, per se, but it must be ring-fenced for regional development.