Ms Catherine Clynes:

Absolutely. The programme monitoring committee is an EU Structural Funds structure which all Structural Fund programmes use. It is a cross-border committee which represents central and local government, the community and voluntary sector, the environmental sector, trade unions, the business sector and so on. It in turn appoints a steering committee for project selection purposes. The steering committee is a creature of the programme monitoring committee. The SEUPB, which is responsible for managing the programme, puts out calls for applications which are generally competitive. When the applications come in, the SEUPB assesses them, using expert assessors where appropriate, and makes recommendations to the steering committee. A scoring matrix is used and the process is very transparent and robust. The steering committee, which is set up by the programme monitoring committee, will then consider the tranches of applications in each theme and will score them. The SEUPB is operating in an advisory capacity at this stage and will make the decision on whether to reject or accept an application. There is also a review process available.