Ms Diane Ruddock:

I thank the Chairman and members for their warm welcome and invitation to come and address the committee. I extend an apology on behalf of our Northern Ireland Environment Link chairman, Mr. Patrick Casement, who was to be here but is unfortunately unable to join us. The Chairman has given a very good introduction of Northern Ireland Environment Link. We are pleased to be here today to represent our constituent organisations. Both as individual organisations and collectively as the Environment Link, we work very closely with the Environmental Pillar on strategic cross-Border issues. We are very pleased to be joined today by our colleague, Mr. Michael Ewing, co-ordinator of the Environmental Pillar. I am pleased to share this opening statement with Mr. Ewing.

We are here at a critical and interesting moment in the history of these islands as we all prepare for the implications of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Our starting point is that Northern Ireland shares much more than a land border with another European country. In environmental terms, the island of Ireland is a single and distinct biogeographic unit. That has implications for all of us. We have common seas, common fish stocks and common river catchments with rivers flowing across the Border in both directions. We have a common and distinctive flora and fauna. Like water and air, plants and animals do not recognise any border. We share a significant number of designated sites protecting internationally important species and habitats.

Since our entry into the European Union, Ireland - North and South - has benefited from the common framework of EU legislation and directives and related structures to harness co-operation and protect nature. In doing so, many communities, individuals and communities of interest have been brought together to work together in the common cause of looking after our nature and environment. The United Kingdom's departure from the European Union raises many questions of potential inconsistencies in protecting and managing the environment on both sides of the Border. The committee will have received our briefing paper, which highlights some of these potential issues and also looks at the possible opportunities that we need to seize in the future in order to strive for even better outcomes for our shared environment.

A healthy, thriving and well protected environment underpins the health and economic well-being of our society. We very much hope today will be the start of an ongoing and constructive dialogue with all of the members of the committee. In particular, we ask them in their roles to do all that they can to ensure the safeguarding of the environment is fully taken into account in the wide range of negotiations that are to come. We also ask them to press for appropriate cross-Border structures, mechanisms and funding streams to be either put in place or to remain in place where they currently exist to ensure our nature, land and sea is handed on to future generations in better conditions than they are in today.

I hand over to Mr. Ewing for some further comments.