Ms Finola Moylette:

The Leader programme is a large one that is delivered across the country by private limited companies. It depends largely on private individuals and community groups to make applications for funding. The financial crisis had a severe impact on those communities and local enterprises. One of the big reasons for the slower take-up was the ability of both community groups and the individual business people who wanted to take up the funding to access finance for the bridging element. The programme part-finances projects; 50% is provided in grant aid to a private individual or 75% to community group. That became a significant issue in terms of seeing the programme succeed to the end. We made a number of changes to the programme to try to allow the situation to change. We increased the grant rates and we also allowed a little more freedom to the groups in terms of the funding they put against the various measures in the programme to help them to pick that up. We can see the fruits of that now.