The Irish Regions European Office is based in Brussels and represents the three Regional Assemblies and 31 local authorities of Ireland.
Operating as part of the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly and with the support of the Department for Housing, Planning and Local Government, our focus is on bringing the EU closer to the wider local government sector and vice versa.
Iris Regions European Office
5th Floor
Rue Froissart 50
B-1040 Bruxelles
+32 (0) 2 2331122
IREO has four main functions by which it seeks to provide timely and relevant guidance and advisory services to stakeholders in order to inform and facilitate their individual and collective understanding of and engagement in European activities:
Being based in Brussels gives us a practical advantage and enables us to:
Following on from the enactment of the Local Government Reform Act 2014, three new Regional Assemblies came into effect on 1st January 2015, namely the Southern Regional Assembly, the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly and the Northern & Western Regional Assembly.
Both the Southern Assembly and the Northern and Western Regional Assembly are managing authorities for the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), managing respectively the Southern and Eastern Regional Operational Programme 2014-2020 and the Border, Midland and Western Regional Operational Programme 2014-2020. All three Regional Assemblies also provide national contact points for European Territorial Cooperation Programmes and participate on those programmes’ monitoring committees.
Other key duties of the assemblies are to:
The European Union adopts legislation in a number of areas that have a direct impact on Member States and on local and regional authorities.
Established in 1994, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) is an EU advisory body composed of 350 local and regional elected representatives.
To help achieve its various policy objectives, the European Union provides financial support for activities to be undertaken by organisations, including local and regional authorities.
One of the four key functions of the Irish Regions European Office is to enable local and regional actors to make the most of having their own permanent physical presence at the heart of Europe with all that entails in terms of tapping into useful connections.
