Mr. Seamus Neely:

Mr. Kelpie describes the model we have developed in recent years. We wanted to ensure this partnership provides a single platform to voice the needs of the region and, more important, to speak for the potential of the region and drive that potential. We have done this. On the approach in general, we view the work of the partnership with the two councils and all the other partners as being a concerted effort to develop the whole of the region. Essentially, we are about ensuring that things continue to happen in a way that better underpins the functioning of our local communities.

As we heard from the previous two speakers, the integral connections between the communities across both council areas are particularly important. There is also a very strong focus on alignment of resources and effort around the development of the place, and on the development of policy that underpins the development of place and the functioning of communities generally. We do that across three broad regionally agreed objectives, namely, economic growth and investment; physical and environmental development; and social and community cohesion and well-being. It is a whole-of-place, whole-of-people, whole-of-communities approach. We are now able to plug into a structure that brings in local and business perspectives and includes all the partners at local level as well as the councils. Very importantly, it forges an opportunity to connect with the programmes of Government North and South to create an alignment that ensures maximum efficiency in the deployment of resources. Essentially, we wanted to avoid duplication of effort and the deployment of competition where collaboration brings better outcomes. At the end of the day, it is about realising the full potential of our place, which includes the fourth largest city on the island of Ireland. It is, therefore, a very significant place.

Mr. Kelpie referred to the wider partnership. It involves education, business, community, councils and government. Under the education and skills heading, our partners at local level are Ulster University at Magee, Letterkenny Institute of Technology, the North-West Regional College and Donegal Education and Training Board. They are working on an aligned basis with the co-ordinated policies of both councils and the partners generally around those broad headings. That has, for example, led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the four institutions which is now supported by a resource to develop it. It is about ensuring there is continued capacity for our educational facilities to understand as quickly as possible the current and emerging skills and educational needs of our communities and businesses, so that there is capacity to respond on a real-time basis. Bespoke classes are being put in place across all four institutions and 100% of the students that go through those courses go straight into employment at local level. That is because there has been a joined-up approach. Education is not being provided just because of the numbers but has been aligned with need. That would not have happened to the same extent before and the approach is working very well.

We have developed international partnerships, particularly in the US but also in China. The skills development piece has been across that as well. In addition, and we do not always say this because we expect that people know, we have our joint north west promotion on marketing investment.

We would never now look at developing something in isolation without ensuring a collaborative approach is not the best option. That is now second nature to us. One of the things we are doing now is developing a city region dashboard so that can be there on an iterative basis where all of our citizens and business partners across the board, internal and external, and indeed beyond the region can come in and have a look at what is there, what the opportunities are and what the local statistics are to ensure there is real-time information around what are the opportunities and requirements of our region. We have had a particular emphasis on supporting our SMEs in the north east of the US. We have in-market support in the US. One of them focuses on developing opportunities for our SME sector and more recently we have collectively deployed a resource to help us establish opportunities, particularly on the FDI side, in support of both the IDA, INI and Enterprise Ireland.

We have done a lot of work on Brexit analysis. We were the first two councils to commission collectively a detailed piece of work, working with Queen's University Belfast, the University of Ulster and Trinity College Dublin, that began immediately after the referendum and provided an opportunity to understand at local level what the issues were, to engage with all of our communities around that and to capture the energy and concerns that have been developed at local level and see how they might be constructively managed in a way we could articulate to both Governments but also to the EU. That has been successful. That work has continued. More recently, we have worked with the other nine councils that are at or near the Border to develop a whole-of-Border approach to that.

Some of the specific examples we have done together supporting the economy and tourism at local level involve things like the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open and a feasibility study for the deep water cruise ship berthing at Lough Foyle in partnership with Foyle Port. Things we are working on currently include the development of our north-west joint tourism strategy. What we have done is ensure that our work together enables us to focus on the practicalities of what needs to be done to support communities. Some of the examples I mentioned do that. We have also ensured that while this is ongoing, that effort and energy is deployed in a manner that is consistent with and feeding from both regional and national policies so there has been a significant focus on ensuring that we articulate what our needs are in the national process, feed into and respect it and develop our own policies from that. I will hand back to my colleague, Mr. John Kelpie.