Mr. Seamus Neely:

I thank the Chairman and other members of the joint committee for the invitation to meet with them today and present our case on the importance of strategic road access to the north-west of the island. We have travelled here as a collaboration of a number of councils, including Monaghan County Council, Donegal County Council, Derry City and Strabane District Council, as well as Fermanagh, Omagh, and the Mid-Ulster councils. Those councils represent 500,000 to 750,000 people so it is a significant cohort and critical mass in an area with much potential that has yet to be realised.

Councils both North and South are currently enjoying the first opportunities to work under extended powers and remits. Both sets of councils have worked together in recent months and years on responding to the development needs of our areas, including environmental, physical, structural and community planning. In so doing, we have formed views on the potential that exists within our regions. At the same time, we have got a first-hand understanding of the critical nature of access to our region. In that context, some progress has been made generally both in community and economic development across our region in the past ten years. However, we feel that much potential remains to be achieved under those headings.

One of the most critical deficits at the moment relates to the need to have a safe route into the north-west from the east with certainty of travel times. We need to dispel the notion of the north-west being distant or reached with some uncertainty. Part of that notion has already been dispelled but more work remains to be done. Over the past 20 years, there have been significant achievements on other fronts, but we want to build on them. There has been a considerable easing of cross-Border barriers and communities are now working collaboratively. In particular, councils North and South are working together on community planning. The most recent reform of local government has enabled us to plan for our communities collectively in a way that we have not done before.

We appreciate the overall commitment to the route. We are talking about a cost of €870 million to bring the stretch from the city of Derry through to Ballygawley. We appreciate the commitment from the Irish Government in contributing the sum of €75 million towards that. The difficulty concerns timelines. We are looking at the first phase being to Strabane, then Omagh to Ballygawley, and the last phase from Strabane to Omagh. That will impact on other plans by Donegal County Council, including links from Letterkenny to Strabane that would tie in with the A5. For some years we have had approval - previously from the National Roads Authority, NRA, and now Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII - for compulsory purchase for a new bridge at Strabane. In addition, there is a commitment that funding will become available for that. Our difficulty, however, is that what we had planned to tie in with on the Northern side does not exist at present. Being the last phase, it automatically sets back the new crossing from Lifford to Strabane quite a bit.

One of the fundamental changes in our approach in recent years is the fact that we fully understand that there is significant unrealised potential all along the route, but particularly in the north-west. Currently, there is a net cost to both governments for running public services in the north-west region. We feel there is a potential to expand our economic base and the role of our territories, whether in tourism or foreign direct investment, to a point where economic activity will be strengthened. In that way, the balance would turn from being a cost to a net contributor. The economic argument for this is much stronger now than in the past. It comes on the back of a lot of collaborative work to ensure that other things are in place to sustain necessary employment and economic growth.

I will now hand over to my colleague, Mr. John Kelpie.