

The Southern Regional Assembly has a role to assist, coordinate, and animate the space in the public sector to ensure we maximise funding into the Southern Region. As project partners ourselves and as the National Contact Point for Interreg Europe and the Interreg Ireland/Wales programme we identified a need to support Project Officers.
The Southern Region European Territorial Co-Operation (ETC) Network was established in May 2019 in Cork City with a meeting of Interreg Europe Project Officers hosted by Cork Institute of Technology.
In September 2019, the Southern Regional Assembly hosted a workshop in Waterford City for all European Territorial Co-Operation Project Officers to discuss project claims and Interreg Europe regional action plans.
Following this event, we undertook a survey to gauge project officers need for and benefit of the ETC Network with the following results:
86% of Project Officers would welcome online meetings
86% of Project Officers would be willing to host a meeting of the ETC Network members on a rotational basis
82% of Project Officers main reason for participating in the ETC Network was to develop contacts and attend networking events to learn from other ETC Network members, this was closely followed by support in identifying good practices, access to training, introduction to appropriate stakeholders and guidance for claims
Following your feedback and overwhelming support for the Network participants, the Southern Regional Assembly agreed to facilitate the Network on an ongoing basis with the support and participation of ETC members.