Mr. Shane Campbell:

I will respond first and others may join in. I may not touch on all of the points but I will cover Brexit and transport. The others and I may also address the issue of the interconnector, and they may also come in on Brexit and transport. I will pick up on a couple of the points that were made. If there is time, I will also present some other information to the committee.

The issue is not about what will be the impact of Brexit: it is already impacting. We carried out a study last year with Queen's University Belfast. It was a project through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reconciliation fund and we engaged with 600 people and businesses across the Border region.

Three quarters of those people and businesses expressed the opinion that Brexit is already impacting upon them. That impact occurs in many ways, including confidence, uncertainties, businesses putting off job expansions and young people rethinking their education choices and study locations. We have also come across many case studies examining the impact of Brexit on investment in the region. There are, then, many concerns about Brexit. We will all be concerned until we find out what the final direction of travel will be on this matter.

ICBAN, as a cross-Border group, is representative of the different political interests on both sides of the Border. We recognised, and the board took the mature attitude, that it was not going to be a network about rehashing arguments on issues such as remaining in or leaving the EU. Brexit, however, is a pressing issue on which we as a board have to make collective decisions. The collective decision and policy reached by the board was to work together, regardless of different opinions on issues, to withstand any negative consequences arising from Brexit impacting on the Border region. We have gathered and shared stories to which I have referred and presented them to MPs, Deputies, MLAs and Senators. Concerns about those issues are being expressed by people across the region. We are delighted they have been reviewed at the highest levels by the Irish Government, the United Kingdom Government and the negotiating team in Brussels.

Turning to transport, I would like to highlight some issues in the region. The A5-N2 road from Dublin to Derry and the A29 road from Coleraine to Monaghan are among seven key roads in our area. I will share a map illustrating my point with the committee. There are 45 million vehicle crossings annually and 11% of those involve light or heavy goods vehicles. Similar numbers cross from North to South. In the Border region, it is possible to estimate that each year there are between 4.5 million and 5 million freight crossings of the Border.

The key Border crossings can be seen from the map we have shared with the committee. Our area includes the Border crossings labelled D, E, F, G, H, I and J on the map. They span the central Border region and that is the geography of the area. The north west and the east are also shown separately on the same map. When we add up the percentage of the total number of goods vehicle crossings of the Border using these routes, give or take perhaps one or two percentage points, some 35% of crossings happen in the central Border region. One third of goods vehicle crossings take place in the north west, one third take place in the east and the remaining third are in the central Border region. That is mainly along the A5-N2 and A29 roads, which is our key industrial belt from mid and east Antrim right down through mid-Ulster and into Monaghan and Cavan. It is an area overlooked in Government policy. There was scant mention in the NPF of the region we inhabit. The north-west city region is profiled yet it has the same number of freight movements. The eastern corridor is also profiled and that is significant because of the Belfast to Dublin link through Newry and Dundalk.

I am not making an argument for the central Border region versus the north west or the east regions. Instead, I am highlighting that Government policy for the entire region, on both sides of the Border, has not been considered collectively. Taking into account just this one economic indicator of freight movement and travel, if we do not address the issues faced by the central Border region, we will not be effectively balancing development across the area. We might well all be sitting here again in another 20 years wondering what we are going to do about the Border.

The central Border region area is as important as any other. We may have seven routes overall, with two or three in the east and two or three in the north west, but when we examine our central Border region, it is as economically important. We could even argue that much of the traffic that should come through our area is not coming through because the roads are deficient compared with other areas. That is the collective case that must be made for these eight county areas to be considered as part of Government policy. To date, that has been missing. I will leave it at that to let others in.