Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Councillor Canning and Ms Margey from Donegal, and Councillor Hastings. It is a pleasure to see them and to have met them yesterday evening. In the north-west cross-Border group, Donegal is the main stakeholder in the Republic, and has suffered alongside the North over many years due to the lack of joined-up political thinking between the Six Counties and the Border counties. Unfortunately, it has led to an infrastructural and economic deficit in the north west. Deputy Mac Lochlainn referred to the fact that we have no motorway or train line. Unfortunately, the timing of the St. Andrews Agreement in 2006 and the agreement that came with it to fund the A5 happened at the moment when finances on both sides of the Border went downhill. Before that, when motorways were being built across the rest of the country, the joined-up political thinking and co-operation to build the A5 did not exist. County Donegal also suffered due to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It is all the more important that, now that things have stabilised and much progress have been made, the work of groups such as the north-west region cross-Border group leads to joined-up thinking between the North and South. Ms Margey outlined earlier that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in the South and OFMDFM in the North are responsible for driving it.

In terms of the North West Gateway Initiative and making it happen - as opposed to the projects the North West Region Cross Border Group would lead, which are SEUPB funded, and which give the group a leadership role - and in terms of education and enterprise, connectivity, and health and community, which are strands of the gateway initiative, who is responsible for driving these matters at a political end? Is it happening at both the northern end and the southern end? It appears from the report, for which the committee is thankful, that there is a lack of drive at an executive level to make the concept underpinning the gateway initiative a reality. How do we achieve that?