Mr. John Kelpie:

On the Senator's question on diversity, it is fair to say that Northern Ireland has its challenges on this issue and has had challenges historically. It has made considerable improvement on that in recent years. There is still a long way to go. Sub-regionally, Derry city has been at the forefront of seeing the opportunities of embracing diversity, and the outworkings of that have been apparent to all who have seen the progress in the city, particularly in recent years. The equality issues that the city of Derry face are mostly in the area of balanced regional development, namely, the infrastructure deficit, the skills gap that exists and the jobs deficiency. Those are the key equality issues that we currently struggle with in that part of the world and that we have expressed today.

We have an arts officer within the council, a cultural officer and an events officer. It may be recalled that Derry was the UK city of culture in 2013, which was a marvellous year for the city, which built on all that positivity. There were more than 1 million visitors to a city of 100,000 people within 12 months. We are about to embark on a joint bid with Belfast for European city of culture in 2023, which, as we understand it, is a geographical designation, not necessarily a designation that depends on membership of the EU.