Ms Joan Martin:

I suspect that one of the things that will come up at the upcoming conference with councillors in Enniskillen will be issues like the communications strategy. The difficulty with Brexit, as we alluded to ourselves, is that much of what we talked about and our pessimism is possibly the worst-case scenario. The problem is that we do not know what it is going to look like. A strategy on how we will go forward will come out of next month with the councillors and the conference, either as individual parts of the Border area or as a united Border area. That is something that will come up at that conference.

On the goals that we have in Louth, nothing can happen for communities and people if wealth is not created. Things like entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise are probably at the heart of the community goals. People constantly get excited about foreign direct investment, FDI, and its importance, and ask why IDA Ireland is not bringing jobs. FDI is quite a small percentage of jobs. The greatest number of jobs are in indigenous and small businesses created by people with entrepreneurial skills. That whole issue of developing entrepreneurship in communities and the whole enterprise area is very important. On the economic goals side, we would claim successes everywhere, and we would claim challenges everywhere as well. On broadband connectivity and on transport, when I listened to Mr. John Kelpie talking about the A5, we would always have infrastructural requirements in Louth. I was here not long ago with my colleague from Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, Mr. Liam Hannaway, talking about the Narrow Water Bridge project. We are blessed in Louth with general infrastructure like motorways and so on, and we have railway lines and so on. We also have very good broadband connectivity already. Broadband is already quite good for about 85% of our population. Our county is quite organised. Dundalk and Drogheda take up quite a large part of the population. We have had much success with our own broadband action plan, working with providers and having a committee that includes all the providers.

I was also asked about Omeath versus Carlingford. Carlingford has many medieval castles, gates, towers, bits of wall and so on that give it a level of tourist attraction that Omeath may not have as a natural blessing. It also has an incredibly active community, with groups and individuals in the community who have driven the tourism project. That included people developing leprechaun hunts on one side - we have many leprechauns living on the mountain, apparently - or whether it was people who invested in bed and breakfast, in high quality restaurants and so on. We would say it is like a mini-Kinsale. People have made that happen. Omeath is probably the most peripheral part of County Louth. It is sitting on the Border. It has been very deprived. It needs more investment. It has had some but needs more. We intend to work more with the community there to see what more we can do. I do not know if it would ever be as successful with tourists as Carlingford. It does not have the same infrastructure or product range available. I remember when I was young, it was always packed on a Sunday. I do not know how much spending the visitors were doing.