How PEACE PLUS is structured
PEACE PLUS is jointly managed by Ireland and Northern Ireland via SEUPB, a Good Friday Agreement institution. All projects must have a cross-border or cross-community dimension. Read the funding twice: of the €1,145m, the EU itself puts in €234m. The UK puts in €681m, Northern Ireland €170m and Ireland €59m. The ERDF column is 80% of the total because 80% is the Interreg maximum — but most of the money inside it is British, not Brussels.
ERDF (Interreg)Reg. (EU) 2021/1059€1.145bn total (2021–2027)
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 REGIO
€234m from the EU in the Financing Agreement of March 2023 — which is the €235m that Ireland commits to PEACE PLUS out of its ETC allocation under Reg. (EU) 2021/1059, as it lands in the financing table
Irish Govt (Dept. of Public Expenditure) + NI Executive
Joint co-sponsors of SEUPB; provide national co-financing
Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) — Managing Authority, Joint Secretariat and Accounting Function
Good Friday Agreement institution. It runs the calls, assesses applications, approves claims, draws up the Programme’s accounts and submits payment applications to the Commission. Decisions on funding are taken by the Steering Committees, not by SEUPB itself.
Pobal — Intermediary Body for Investment Areas 1.2 and 6.2
For Small Scale Projects (1.2) and Investment Area 6.2, Pobal handles the applications and does the management verifications on behalf of SEUPB. If you are applying under those areas, Pobal is your counterparty — not the Joint Secretariat, and not an external Controller.
11 NI District Councils + 6 Irish Border County Councils
Lead Local Action Plans; design investment plans with local communities
👉 Your organisation sits at this level
Delivery Partners — NGOs, Charities, Health, Education Bodies
Cross-community and cross-border projects with a peace/reconciliation dimension
Participants and communities
Border communities, victims and survivors of the Troubles, cross-community participants and young people. In Interreg language the beneficiary is the partner organisation that claims; these are the people the work is for.
Audit Chain
Built upward from your project, not downward from Brussels. Your records → the Controller verifies each partner’s expenditure (management verifications; for Investment Areas 1.2 and 6.2 this is Pobal) → SEUPB’s Managing Authority and Joint Secretariat approve the claim, and its Accounting Function certifies the accounts and claims from the European Commission → the Audit Authority — a unit of the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DPER) in Ireland, deliberately outside SEUPB — audits a sample and sends the Commission an annual audit opinion, assisted by a Group of Auditors with one representative for Ireland and one for the UK and Northern Ireland (Department of Finance NI), each auditing in its own territory → the European Commission accepts the accounts. Alongside, not above: the Commission’s own audit services, the European Court of Auditors, national bodies, and OLAF, which investigates suspected fraud.
Process maps under this programme
Where this came from
Human reviewed2026-09-07Automatically checked2026-09-07Current source statusAutomatic baseline required
- PEACEPLUS Programme Manual, version 12 — §1.7 programme bodies, §1.7.5 controllers, §1.7.6 accounting function, §1.7.7 audit authority and Group of Auditors, §1.7.8 Pobal as Intermediary Body, §5.5 management verifications — Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), February 2026A · Governing source checkedAuto: review needed
- Parliamentary Question on EU Funding — PEACEPLUS financing table — Houses of the Oireachtas, 29 February 2024C · Official secondary sourceAuto: review needed
Read against the source on 2026-09-07. This is the human-reviewed version.
What that check changed: A secondary summary said €916m of ERDF and looked like it contradicted the €235m already here. The Dáil answer has both: the ERDF column is €916m and €681m of it is British money. The original figure was right and was kept. Checked again on 7 September 2026 against Programme Manual v12, after an independent audit, which found the bodies wrong in three ways. The audit chain called the Audit Authority “SEUPB Audit Authority”: it is not inside SEUPB at all — it is a unit of the Department of Public Expenditure in Ireland, placed outside the body that runs the programme precisely so that it is independent. The chain also ran downward from the European Court of Auditors and OLAF, which are not tiers, and left out the three bodies that are: the Controller who verifies every partner’s expenditure, SEUPB’s own Accounting Function, and the European Commission the whole chain reports to. And Pobal was missing entirely, although it is the Intermediary Body for Small Scale Projects — the very applicants this map is written for, who would otherwise contact the wrong body.