Ms Pamela Arthurs:

If we are to be serious about assisting the Border, we have to do more. It has to be more strategic and has to involve the Irish Government, at the highest levels, working in conjunction with Northern Ireland. It could involve working with the Secretary of State to say that we need to be strategic and focus on the Border area. If one looks at the INTERREG programmes, PEACE PLUS proposes €250 million in total. It is nothing for the extant needs. There needs to be a strategic intervention. If EU funding is taken out of cross-Border activity, no one will fund it. There is a small amount of money from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and that is all. It has never been taken seriously. We have been always working against the tide with regard to cross-Border co-operation. We have been lauded across Europe, as the Deputy said, but we have not been lauded at home and the Border corridor lags behind. Our young people have been leaving.

This is perhaps an opportunity to properly focus and take a strategic approach to address the needs. We did something similar in the past so this is not new. The first two INTERREG programmes were centralised. All the decisions were made in Dublin and Belfast. People here were deciding what our needs were. There should be a bottom-up approach to requirements. For the INTERREG III programme, all our members said they wanted to make decisions. We did that at local level. We set up an action team involving Dublin and Belfast.

We had a government then. It was from our two finance Ministers in Belfast and Dublin and relevant people along the Border who could speak for the Border. The elected members there have a mandate and they have the only mandate in Northern Ireland at the moment. As such, it is not reinventing the wheel. It can be done but it needs the Governments to say at the highest levels that they recognise our worry that notwithstanding all the talk about the Border, we will be left to fend for ourselves after it is sorted in whatever way. There is something that can be done which is tangible and will make a difference but it needs to start now. So many businesses have closed, in particular on this side of the Border. These are small and micro businesses including, for example, companies in the mushroom industry. They are going now. We need to look at this but there is no point if we do not do so on a cross-Border basis. Cross-Border is not easy but it makes sense.