How Erasmus+ is structured in Ireland
Erasmus+ uses National Agencies — Léargas and the HEA — instead of the Managing Authority model, so nobody in the cohesion-fund chain applies here. What your grant agreement obliges you to keep: Annex 2 (“Applicable rules to eligible costs”) lists the supporting documentation that is obligatory for each activity type; the participant templates themselves are Annex 6, and for recent KA1 projects they can be generated in the Beneficiary Module. The grant agreement with the participant is compulsory for the individual mobility types Annex 2 names, and a missing one can make those mobilities ineligible; Léargas strongly recommends the rest. Final reports go through the Beneficiary Module within 60 days of the project end.
Erasmus+Reg. (EU) 2021/817 — Arts. 26 national authority, 28 supervision, 29 independent audit body, 30 controls€110m+ to Ireland 2021–2024; €26.2bn EU-wide
One programme, too many disconnected records. Delivery notes, partner decisions, expenditure, results and reporting evidence often sit in different places.
How the money reaches an organisation
Every level here can be asked for its own process map. That is the point of yours.
European Commission — DG EAC
Sets priorities and budget under Reg. (EU) 2021/817 (€26.2bn for 2021–2027) and supervises the National Agencies: it reviews the national management and control system, sets the minimum requirements for the Agency’s controls and for the independent audit body, and takes assurance from the yearly management declaration (Arts. 28 and 30(2)).
EACEA — European Education and Culture Executive Agency
Implements the centralised actions in direct management — Erasmus Mundus, Jean Monnet, Capacity Building, European Universities, sport partnerships. It has no role in Irish decentralised grants and does not oversee or audit the National Agencies.
DFHERIS — Irish National Authority
Designates the National Agencies and the independent audit body, monitors and supervises them (Arts. 26 and 29), and is accountable to the Oireachtas through Vote 45.
Léargas — National Agency (schools · VET · adult ed · youth · sport)
Runs the calls, awards the grants, does the primary checks on your project and signs a yearly management declaration for its share of the programme. Léargas is a company limited by guarantee, not a public body: its statutory auditors are its own, and it is audited for Erasmus+ by the independent audit body below.
HEA — National Agency (higher education)
Funds universities and technological universities for mobility and cooperation, on the same model. Unlike Léargas, the HEA is itself audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General as a public body.
👉 Your organisation sits at this level
Your organisation — schools · ETBs · universities · NGOs · youth organisations
Signs the grant agreement, keeps the documentation Annex 2 requires for each activity type, holds the participant agreements from Annex 6, and files the final report in the Beneficiary Module.
Participants
Students, apprentices, further-education learners, school pupils, young people, adult learners and staff. In Erasmus+ language your organisation is the beneficiary; these are the people the mobility is for.
Audit Chain
Built upward from your project. Your records → the National Agency’s primary checks on beneficiaries (Art. 30(3)) → the Agency’s yearly management declaration → the independent audit body designated by DFHERIS, which issues the audit opinion on that declaration and forms the basis of the Commission’s assurance (Art. 29) → DFHERIS as National Authority monitors and supervises → the European Commission, DG EAC. Alongside, not above: the European Court of Auditors, OLAF and the European Public Prosecutor, and the Comptroller and Auditor General, which audits Vote 45 and the HEA — but not Léargas, which has its own statutory auditors.
Process maps under this programme
- Erasmus+To send someone to learn, teach or train in another country and bring what they learn home — so that the benefit lands in the organisation, not only in the person who travelled.
- Erasmus+ KA210 — Small-scale PartnershipsTo let an organisation that has never touched EU funding run a real international project at a size it can actually carry — so that a first Erasmus+ application is not also the last one.
Where this came from
Human reviewed2026-09-07Automatically checkedMonitoring pendingCurrent source statusAutomatic baseline required
- Regulation (EU) 2021/817 (Erasmus+) — Art. 26 national authority and the designation of an independent audit body, Art. 28 Commission supervision, Art. 29 the audit opinion on the yearly management declaration, Art. 30 controls — Official Journal of the European UnionA · Governing source checkedAuto: review needed
- Erasmus+ Programme Guide — who implements the programme, and Small-scale partnerships (KA210) — European CommissionB · Official operational guidance checkedAuto: pending
- Manage your grant — Annex 2 lists the obligatory supporting documentation, Annex 6 holds the participant templates, final report within 60 days through the Beneficiary Module — Léargas, National Agency for Erasmus+B · Official operational guidance checkedAuto: pending
Read against the source on 2026-09-07. This is the human-reviewed version.
What that check changed: Checked on 7 September 2026 after an independent audit, which found the control structure drawn wrong in three ways. EACEA was described as the body that “oversees and audits National Agencies”. It does not: EACEA implements the centralised actions in direct management, and supervision of the National Agencies belongs to the European Commission itself under Articles 28 and 30(2). The chain also named the Comptroller and Auditor General as the auditor of Léargas. Léargas is a company limited by guarantee and states in its own annual report that it is not a public body; it has its own statutory auditors. The C&AG audits Vote 45 and the HEA, and that is now what the entry says. And the one tier the Regulation actually places in this fund’s assurance chain was missing altogether: the independent audit body designated by DFHERIS under Article 26(4), whose opinion on the National Agency’s yearly management declaration is the basis of the Commission’s assurance under Article 29. It is now in the chain, which reads upward from your own project instead of downward from the European Court of Auditors. One operational sentence was also wrong in a way that would send a grant-holder to the wrong page: the mobility templates are Annex 6 of the grant agreement, not Annex 2 — Annex 2 is the rules on eligible costs, which lists what documentation each activity type obliges you to keep — and only the participant grant agreement is compulsory, for the activity types Annex 2 names, rather than every template for every mobility.