I thank the Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here. It was also a great pleasure to welcome the committee members to Belfast last October when they came to meet us and, more importantly, to visit some of the projects on the ground. I believe they probably got a better sense from that visit of what is actually happening under the PEACE programme than they would have from ten presentations from somebody like myself. I really appreciate that they made the effort to do that. I am very glad to be back here to give an account of our work.
I reiterate that SEUPB is responsible for the INTERREG and the PEACE programmes, which are funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The ratio of funding within the programmes is 75% to 25%. Some 75% comes from the ERDF while 25% of it comes from the member states, namely, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive and British Government. That is basically how the programmes are funded.
SEUPB has three key regulatory functions. As managing authority, we are responsible for ensuring that the programmes are implemented in accordance with the provisions contained in the operational programme, which was agreed for both programmes, and in accordance with the EU regulations that govern the implementation of these programmes. That is fundamentally the responsibility of the managing authority. We have a directorate within our organisation which does just that.
We also have a directorate called the joint technical secretariat, JTS, which is an arrangement that is quite common to programmes such as these throughout Europe. That part of our organisation is responsible for the physical implementation of the programmes - in other words, it is responsible for ensuring there is a sufficient supply of applications to the programmes, assessing those applications, putting them up for approval by steering committees, following on thereafter, monitoring whether they are doing what they said they would do and checking that expenditure is in line with commitments.
The third function within our organisation, for which Ms Gina McIntyre is responsible along with other duties, is that of the certifying authority. We are responsible for certifying to the European Commission that the expenditure on the ground is in accordance with regulations and that it is, therefore, eligible for reclaiming back from the Commission. We reclaim the expenditure from the Commission in arrears once it has actually happened. Those are the basic issues around the way in which we operate as an organisation.
In regard to the programmes, there are two key dimensions which are worth mentioning. Each programme has its own monitoring committee, each of which has approximately 40 members. The monitoring committees are nominated by the relevant Minister, namely, the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The membership of the committees consist of representatives of Government Departments, relevant statutory agencies, the social partners, including employers and trade unions, community and voluntary sector organisations and broad representation in terms of civic society. That is the ultimate oversight body for both programmes. It is chaired by myself and we report to the monitoring committee in regard to the work on the programmes.
The monitoring committee has a subset consisting of steering committees, which are the parts of the programme responsible for decisions with regard to funding. Representation on those steering committees usually comprises representatives of relevant Government Departments, social partners, the community and voluntary sector, etc. The decision-making in terms of allocation of funding is taken in the first instance there.
There is another dimension to the way in which we manage programmes which is unique to Northern Ireland and the Border counties in terms of ERDF-funded cross-Border co-operation programmes - that is, the role of the accountable Departments. SEUPB works with 16 different accountable Departments in Northern Ireland and Ireland. They provide us with the matching funding - the 25% element I referred to earlier - but, importantly, they provide us with the cash flow. We draw down cash from them which enables us to pay projects. They also have an important role in terms of agreement to funding of individual projects. That happens once the steering committee has agreed that a project should be funded. It then needs to go through the approval process in the accountable Department. That is a unique feature of our programmes relative to other European cross-border co-operation programmes. It means that the approval process takes longer than it might otherwise but it is a feature to bear in mind.
In regard to the implementation of the current programmes - INTERREG IV and PEACE III - we tabled a progress report for the committee, so it will have the big figures. The value of INTERREG IV was €256 million. To date we have approved €214.2 million for 72 projects, which amounts to approximately 84% of the total value of the programme. So far we have spent €71 million. All of the N+2 targets have been achieved to date. We have exceeded those targets in each of the years. Our cumulative target for 2012 is just over €103 million. We will make that target; there will be no difficulty. It is not that it will not be challenging, but we will make the target. We constantly review the operations of the programme to try to ensure greater efficiencies and effectiveness and we are always open to suggestions in that regard.
I mention some of the projects we have funded. There are four pillars to the INTERREG programme. First, there is the enterprise pillar, which includes the KITE project - knowledge, innovation and technical engineering - and the trade links project, which promotes specific support mechanisms for cross-Border trading SMEs. Under tourism, which is the second pillar of the programme, we have the project called Sail West. I was in Derry-Londonderry yesterday at the launch of part of the Sail West project, the Malin Waters project, which involves the development of a network of coastal facilities along the coast of Northern Ireland, Sligo, and Donegal and the west coast of Scotland. It is quite a remarkable project involving about €7 million. On a broader note, the city of Derry-Londonderry is remarkably positive and active as a result of much of the work the PEACE programmes and the INTERREG programmes are doing there.
Under collaboration, which is the third pillar of the INTERREG programme, I mention the CAWT project, which is significant in terms of health co-operation North and South of the Border. It has been noted as being of particularly excellent practice in a European context. There is huge potential as we move forward to do even more there. The fourth pillar of the INTERREG programme is the infrastructure pillar. Members will be familiar with the Kelvin project, the large telecommunications infrastructure project, but I mention another one, ISLES. The Irish-Scottish Links on Energy Study, which was launched during the year, looked at the feasibility of developing an underwater network for the distribution of electricity, particularly soft energy, between Britain and Ireland. Tellus is a fascinating project doing geological and geographical surveys of the whole region in terms of the geological composition of the area and the overall morphological features of the region, to be used for digital planning, digital maps and overall planning for the region. These are some of the INTERREG projects we are funding.
In regard to PEACE, the total value of the programme is just under €333 million. To date we have approved €341 million for 193 projects. It is over-committed by approximately €8 million, which is not unusual in managing projects like these. When coming to the end of the life cycle of a project, one generally over-commits by a bit to ensure that any slippage is picked up by that level of over-commitment. That is something we manage as programme managers. It has spent just under €129 million and we have achieved all of our N+2 targets for all of the years. We are very confident that we will achieve them for the years ahead as well. Last year's N+2 target was exceeded by €30 million. This year we are just shy of €8 million in our target for the current year, and that will be easily achieved. We will carry forward a surplus into next year. The Peace programme is working very well in terms of levels of commitment and expenditure.
Let me point to some of the very excellent projects that are being funded under the PEACE lll programme. Again we have four pillars to the programme. The first is building positive relationships at a local level and is one of the most exciting and significant parts of the programme in terms of what it is able to do and what has been done with local authorities in Northern Ireland and in the Border counties. In Northern Ireland, the 26 local authorities have formed themselves into seven clusters which co-operate and work with each other across their jurisdictional boundaries, nominating one lead partner from among them, and in addition to that there is Belfast City Council, so we deal with eight entities. We have allocated €100 million to the work they do. They prepare and submit to us multi-annual action plans for the building of positive relationships at a local level, including the managing of small grants within their communities, and to date we have spent €50 million in the first tranche and we are rolling out the second tranche, which will be a similar amount, which will bring the expenditure on local authorities to €100 million on that part of the programme. It is very exciting to see the way the local authorities have taken this on board. It empowers them to get on with doing their work. One can provide them with an envelope over a multi-annual period and they have a strategic plan that is focused on clearly identifiable outcomes.
Another part of that pillar of the programme are regional projects, to which we allocate €40 million. Under that category we work with ex-prisoner groups. We do work on the training for women network and very specific interventions in those kinds of areas. That again is part of the programme that provides us with an opportunity to take a look at the building positive relationships dimension across the whole of the region.
The second pillar is acknowledging and dealing with the past, which is the most sensitive and difficult area in which we work. That is the area of working with victims and survivors of the conflict. It is managed for us by Pobal and CRC, a consortium as an implementing body in the programme. About €50 million in total was allocated to that part of the programme and is being spent as we speak.
The third pillar of the programme, creating shared spaces, is one of the most noticeable in terms of the iconic impact of the programme. A sum of €82 million was allocated to that part of the programme. We could have spent about four or five times that amount based on the applications we received. The most noticeable projects under that heading are the peace bridge in Londonderry. I was in Londonderry yesterday and it is extraordinary to see how much the city has been transformed by the presence of that piece of infrastructure. Other projects are the Skainos project at the interface at the bottom of the Newtownards Road in Belfast, which is the creation of a local community village and which is multi-use. There is a wide range of them, all of them very significant.
The fourth and final pillar is building capacity for a shared future, and in this we have a range of projects which are intended to provide capacity to shared experiences of the programmes on a broader basis to the rest of Europe and beyond. The most notable project approved recently was the Maze-Long Kesh peace and conflict resolution centre, with and of which many will be familiar and aware.
That is where we are to date. The challenges facing us are the continuing challenge of N+2, which is not easy but is an important challenge. We are confident we will meet our commitments but we must watch it very carefully. We need to finalise the commitment on the INTERREG programme and we will need the co-operation of accountable Departments in making that happen as efficiently as possible.
The biggest challenge facing us now is looking beyond 2013 into the 2014 to 2020 funding period. We have begun, at the request of the two member states, to prepare for the new programme, which would be a potential INTERREG V programme and a potential PEACE IV programme. We have begun that process and we are happy to engage with the committee and discuss where we are in relation to it.
I draw attention to the importance of these two programmes in the region. In terms of its economic impact, one is talking of expenditure between €80 million and €100 million in the region at a time of economic austerity and difficulties. That is a very significant contribution in terms of employment, economic activity and the potential multiplier effect these programmes can have. I emphasise the scope and reach of these programme within the region. We have evidence and data that 832,000 individuals out of a population of 2.1 million people in Northern Ireland and the Border counties were involved in PEACE ll programme related activities. That is significant. Some 162,000 people were involved in cross-Border activities and 15,000 projects were funded. The reach of these programmes into every single part of Northern Ireland and the Border counties is significant. There are still very significant challenges to be dealt with in the peace process in Northern Ireland, and if one considers the peace programmes as being the people's peace process in terms of the activities they generate, those challenges deal with deep-seated issues that still remain in our communities as well as with building relationships with these communities and bringing people out of some very dark places.
I thank members for their attention and I am happy to take questions.
