Ms Rose Power:

May I pick up on one thing before I answer some of the specific questions for the managing authority? There is an issue with co-funding. We all know that by providing a mechanism around that, we would definitely increase participation and the diversity of those who could apply. However, there is also the issue with advanced payments. Under some of the ETC programmes, as I mentioned earlier, there is a requirement for these institutions to incur the costs. They probably will not be reimbursed for a period of nine months. They are incurring costs for staff, travel and flights to participate in these EU projects, and they need cash flow for at least nine months to ensure they can participate. Perhaps we need to take that on board.

On the simplified cost options and trust-based systems, there is considerable opportunity for Ireland in what it can do. I am a member of the transnational network on simplification. We are learning from other EU countries and managing authorities what they have done, what they have experience of and what is best practice out there for us to introduce to our regional programmes in Ireland. We have two simplified cost options with the authority for approval. One of those will look at the overhead rates in a number of our third level institutions. The other will deal with postgraduate fees and come up with flat rates and unit costs for those. We have a long way to go.

We are also at the very early stage of looking at a simplified cost option for energy efficiency upgrades. What is required for us to achieve all that is gathering data that we may not have gathered up to this point or that were gathered in diverse areas. We must pull that information together. All of these simplified cost options must be approved by the audit authority and a section 94 simplified cost option must be approved by the Commission. We have a long way to go. We are not seeing the benefit of it as yet but the plan from the managing authority is to move further down that route and to implement as many simplified cost options as possible to reduce that burden of administration. It takes time and resources, unfortunately. We are doing our level best with limited resources to introduce as much of this as possible at this point.

There was also a question about the absorption rates for the 2014 regional programme. We are in the process of coming towards closure on those. Within most of our priorities, the absorption rate has been 100%. We have one priority for urban regeneration for which we are anticipating 100% absorption but it will take another couple of months before we are in a position to sign off on it. That is where we stand. We still have time to finalise that.