By Andrew Balfour

Copyright derryjournal

At May’s meeting of Derry City and Strabane District Council, members approved a motion to contact TEO, to appeal its decision to cut its funding of £65,000 to GSCA and request its reinstatement. At September’s meeting members were presented with an official TEO response, which stated: “The Central Good Relations Fund (CGRF) is a competitive, application-based funding programme. “In 2025/26 a total of 220 applications were received requesting a total funding of £7.1m. “An opening budget of £2.025m has been confirmed. “In any year demand always exceeds available resources and therefore many worthwhile projects are unable to be funded. “Each application is subject to a robust assessment process, led by officials, and funding is allocated in merit list order until the available budget is exhausted. “The CGRF has an appeals process for organisations to avail of should they wish to challenge the status of their application.” Councillor Farrell criticised the response, which was co-signed by First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, and Deputy First Minister, Little-Pengelly, as “quite blunt and really, really disappointing”. “The response doesn’t even reference the name of the organisation,” he noted. “There’s no recognition to the vital work that they do across the arts and culture sector, especially for children and young people in this city and district” “And it makes no reference whatsoever to the impact that it is going to have; that’s vital funding that was expected, was earned, was deserved and I just think the response from (TEO) could have been written by a robot. “Really disappointing.”