Europan Housing Competition

Hi,
Below, is the introduction to the Europan 8 housing competition website:

“EUROPAN’s objective is to assist the young architects of Europe in developing their ideas and disseminating them on strategic sites proposed by municipalities or developers. The general topic of EUROPAN, European urbanity, answers to a demand of European citizens. « Urbanity » is a common way of living the city but also a will to reflect upon the heterogeneity of its forms related to the diversity of uses, and to create public spaces to favour encounters among people in places they share. This Web site gives information and the means of answering in the 19 simultaneous national competitions of the session on 74 different sites.”

http://www.europan-europe.com/e8_gb/home/home.php

From a personal point of view it seems like this competition could prove, an interesting and successful means of increasing awareness and debate about architecture and housing, as well as providing a means of exploring new possiblities for housing design in this country, particularly in light of the positive results arising from such schemes as the the Templebar Framework Plan and Ballymun regeneration

I would like to know if anyone could provide further inforamtion on this competition, ex.-
Has there ever been an Irish entry?
Is it possible to submit entries from non-participationg countries?
Why is Ireland not currently involved in the competion and how might this be changed?
Has the idea ever been discussed by the AAI, RIAI or the Department of the Environment?

Here is a link to a previuos winning entry, (drawings, photos. etc can be found by selecting the “see project” tab in the lower left area).

http://www.europan-europe.com/pages_eng/realisation/construire_ville_projet_sainte.php#

Any useful feedback would be very much appreciated