Ms Emma Murtagh:

I thank the Deputy. I will try to cover a few of those areas. I will come back to the issue of gaps, although we covered a good few of them in our suggestions. On the topic of the match funding, existing mechanisms are already in place. The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has provided some match funding on a more ad hocbasis for environmental projects. I will defer to the national contact point in that Department for more information on this but, as far as I know, it is not a formalised open application system but something the Department deals with on a per-project basis. A cofinancing facility is available for the Creative Europe Fund through the Arts Council because some of those cofinancing rates are very low. As far as I know, that is a well-established, very effective and imperative part of being able to draw down Creative Europe funding where it is extremely competitive and cofinancing rates are low. There are existing mechanisms in Ireland that we could look at and many more examples in Europe. I can definitely circulate the pre-budget submission we made, which breaks down some of those examples. Precedent is there and there are things that could be scaled up and replicated.

The Deputy mentioned a trust-based system. We are not known for being particularly trusting and, especially for the community and voluntary sector, trust has been an issue. In centralised European programmes, such as Erasmus+ and a predecessor programme called Europe for citizens that is now part of a bigger programme - the citizens, equality, rights and value, CERV, programme - we are seeing this trust-based, lump-sum system. I have not seen any specific reports on how that has impacted on the transparency of the programme. There does not seem to have been any issues. It has been continued through a different multi-annual financial framework, MFF, and has been even more radically streamlined. Before 2014, what were the Erasmus+ programmes, including lots of small programmes such as Grundtvig lifelong learning, were all based on actual costs. They were then moved to a lump-sum system through Erasmus. Since 2021, it has been streamlined even further in a very radical way. The fact they are going further with that system indicates it is not causing any issues. It allows for agility and responding. It is more focused on impact than tracking whether every euro went to what was said it would go to. It puts more trust in the co-ordinator. The focus is on delivering impact. That is what is being paid for. As long as that can be done in a way that is above board, there should be no quibbling over the fact of someone taking a taxi when maybe they could have taken the bus.

That was the case before 2014. I can see that it has to be about saving money on both sides. It must take off the administrative burden and focus more on what the project is trying to achieve. There is plenty we could learn and try to adapt for Ireland and EU funding and perhaps for other types of funding as well. There is much to be learned in that regard. The EU tends to be a leader on these types of things. Ireland would do well to look at those examples and learn from them.

On ESF+ and whether any of it filters down, I do not know the exact percentages. What tends to happen is that the ESF+ pot is divided between various Government agencies and Departments. Some if it does trickle down and there are examples of that. Some funding for the social inclusion and community activation programme comes from ESF+. The ability programme that is administered by Pobal has a bit of ESF+ funding. What tends to happen is that the vast majority of it is absorbed and never trickles down. Even the bit that does trickle down almost entirely loses its EU dimension. It is a logo in the corner and people do not see that a project is supported by EU funding. As a result, they are not seeing the benefit of it and people do not realise that whatever they are doing is funded by Europe and they are benefiting from EU involvement. Having even a tiny percentage of this ring-fenced as an open and accessible call for communities to participate in would help them be more involved. It would certainly help smaller groups and take them seriously. The whole point of ESF+ is to deliver on the European pillar of social rights and the 20 principles. For each of those principles, our sector has a role to play and is an integral part of their delivery. In order for them to be taken seriously as partners in delivering on EU and national policies, making sure that they have access, even basically, to the funding that is there to support them is important.

I have covered the other gaps in the proposal. Those are things such as the scale-up fund, the simplifying of systems and match funding. Those are the gaps that are the most immediately glaring, as far as I am concerned.