Ms Gillian Coughlan:

It is good to see Senator Lynch. I thank her for her question. As I mentioned in my presentation, we really feel that local authorities need the capacity built in for the expertise in order to draw down the funding, not only cohesion funding but many other funds, as the Senator said. She is a former county councillor herself so she knows the frustrations that exist as regards funding. As county councillors, we feel there is more scope to access European Union funding through the regional assemblies. That network needs to be strengthened. The employment of European funding officers would be a game-changer. Smaller local authorities could perhaps work in clusters. I do not think every local authority necessarily needs to have one, but the larger local authorities, including the larger local authorities geographically, need one themselves and then we could have clusters of others. They would work in conjunction with the excellent staff at regional level. The expertise is there. It is just a case of it needing to trickle down to the local.

That would be useful practically but also it would show citizens Europe in action. Many people on the ground are beginning to ask what Europe is doing for us. Europe is doing a lot for us but we need to show it. That is really at the core of this model. We must ensure we have cohesion funding and then employ these officers here in Ireland just to ensure that the funding is scoped out for local and regional areas.