Councillor Hugh Hastings:

It has been an experience coming here. This is my first time here. I hope it has been worthwhile. We deserve development and the support of all members of the committee across the political spectrum.

We will do our best to ensure there is co-operation across all the parties in the new councils in Strabane and Donegal and build a coterminous in terms of the way we move forward. It will be the same for peace and rural development. Rural development is very important and it played an important role in the past five years in rural Strabane, Derry, Omagh and Limavady. There is a level of co-operation and a will to win and succeed. We need the people above us to start thinking in that way as well. Our vision is for a fully engaged workforce in the north west. We expect a quality of life right across the board. We would like this committee as our champions to champion our pursuit of developing the north west region. In five years time or in two years time, I hope when we look again at the situation we will be able to say that we have made progress on the roads.

For the information of the committee, we recently met and were well received by Mr. Tommie Kennedy. We had people from across the areas the A5 will cover, including County Monaghan. Mr. Kennedy outlined his commitment and told us the money is ringfenced for this project. I am smiling because obviously money never stays in one place for very long. It was not an unwillingness on his part to proceed but he has to await the outcome of the judicial review and obviously he has to listen to what the courts are saying. We hope the project will move forward in the short term.