Mr. Padraic White:

I thank the Chairman. The committee has a submission that I presented to the committee. I will refer to some of the points rather than go through them in detail. I recall that on 3 November 2014 in Stormont some members of this committee joined with members of the Northern Ireland committee on this subject, which I thought was a fruitful and supportive day.

As Dr. Anthony Soares has said, the issue of the Border development corridor arose out of an analysis of that area and the economic prospects facing the narrower counties alongside the Border, North and South, and their predicament and the diagnosis that they ran the risk of being economically stranded unless some particular actions were taken to counter it. While I am 100% supportive of the all-island economy, the basic thesis is that in itself will not trickle down sufficiently and deal with the issues alongside the narrower Border unless some specific actions are taken. That narrower Border area has additional acute problems because of its peripheral nature in relation to both jurisdictions and because of the legacy of the conflict. It suffers regularly from the distortion of taxes, North and South, which have a disproportionate effect. For example, we have a carbon tax on solid fuel which amounts to about €2.40 per standard bag of coal. There is no such tax in Northern Ireland and, therefore, for business adjoining that narrow Border area, there is a distortion of trade which has a serious effect.

In the past fortnight, the CSO has published statistics on income per county. Those statistics indicate that out of eight regions in Ireland, the Border region has the lowest amount of disposable income per head at the princely figure of €16,981. It has the largest deviation from the State average and that has actually got worse since the previous year. That bottom line deviation is extremely serious. Within that income, 35%, more than a third of disposable income comes from social welfare transfers. We have an economy on the Southern side that has the lowest income of any region and within that the highest proportion dependent on social welfare transfers. In page one of our submission we mention that the idea of a draft solidarity charter was to focus on a number of high level issues where jurisdictions and local authorities and business, North and South of the Border, could find common ground. Dr. Anthony Soares mentioned them. I will pick out one or two examples which illustrate the need for something radical.

On page 2 of the presentation, we refer to the infrastructure and the danger of a three-speed economy across this island where there is the growth of the conurbation along the eastern coast of Dublin and Belfast, which has half of the population of the country and which is growing rapidly, the city regions with the counties surrounding the main cities, and the Border region which fits into neither of those. The outstanding requirement of facilitating economic development in the Border areas in the north west has been identified for years as the N2-A5 road between Dublin and Derry, and the links into Donegal. It was a high priority a number of years ago. We cannot even generate €1.5 million on the Southern side to progress the planning of that part of the road from Clontibret to the Border. That is a fairly serious statement of lack of interest in facilitating economic development in the Border area and the north west.

Broadband is a significant issue. Every little business, such as a tourist business, needs broadband and Wi-Fi. The mobile phone systems have significant dropouts in the Border area where there are two different systems and, generally, they suffer along that area from under provision which directly inhibits the growth of small businesses.

On foreign direct investment, IDA Ireland has produced its new strategy, Winning: Foreign Direct Investment. It has a target of increasing, by 30% to 40%, the number of projects in the Border region between now and 2021, and there are moves to development regional enterprise action plans. It is really important that the commitment in those plans to FDI in the Border region, even though it is only one part of the equation, is sustained.

In the interest of time, I will move on to tourism and recreation on the next page of the presentation. Tourism and recreation has significant potential in the Border area. On the Southern side, we now have the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland's Ancient East. If one were to symbolise the lack of joined-up thinking at a political level, it would be that Ireland's Ancient East stops at Carlingford. We have the Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough, and the Fáilte Ireland mandate stops precisely at Carlingford and the lake there. It makes no sense at all. Actually, it is offensive. A tourist is neutral as to jurisdictions. We need to sort that out.