Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

There are two units in my Department with responsibility for the monitoring and evaluation of European Union co-financed programmes. These are the European Social Fund policy and operations unit and the productive sector operational programme management unit, which has responsibility for the European Regional Development Fund moneys in my Department. These units also incorporate the managing authorities for EU programmes and they are supported by the internal audit unit and the ESF financial control unit. The work programmes for these two units are set out in their business plans and they are reviewed and updated annually to reflect the status of the programmes.

The key monitoring tasks include the provision of the chair and administrative support for the European Union operational programmes monitoring committees under their remit. Meetings of the monitoring committees are held at least twice annually and they actively monitor expenditure and activity under the programmes. The monitoring committees include the social partners and relevant Departments, as well as regional authorities, among their membership. The units also carry out checks to ensure that sufficient financial and management systems are in place in other bodies using EU funds under the programmes. Such bodies include FÁS, Enterprise Ireland and the Department of Education and Science.

All bodies using EU funds are required to provide comprehensive and detailed financial and programme progress reports on a regular basis to the monitoring units. In addition, the managing authorities participate in ongoing reviews of the programmes with the European Commission and engage in a formal annual implementation report process, required by EU regulations, to monitor progress on the EU programmes in general.

With regard to evaluation activity, the managing authorities arrange for ex-ante evaluations, mid-term evaluations and final update evaluations for the respective EU programmes under their remit. In the current programming period of 2000-06, other evaluation work has also been the responsibility of the Structural Funds central evaluation unit in the Department of Finance and this has covered some individual measure evaluations for the programmes managed by my Department. Further, some bodies receiving EU funds for their measures have carried out evaluations of their own measures.

In my view, these units, the ESF operations and policy section and the ERDF productive sector management unit ensure a strong, comprehensive and proactive management structure for EU funds that are managed by my Department.

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