Dr. Anthony Soares:

There is a reason the Senator was not aware of the great work. It started in late 2014 and the work with community groups started in the beginning of 2015. We deliberately kept this quiet and low profile because we wanted to give people the space and the opportunity to have conversations, exchange views and sometimes have some difficult conversations about what cross-Border co-operation means for them and what the Border means for them. Depending on their life experiences and their particular backgrounds, they have different experiences. If one comes from a rural community group, sometimes one might belong to what one thinks is the same community of identity. One might live in a rural area and the other group lives in an urban setting and although one thinks one shares the same identity, in fact, one is very different. Sometimes one is having these difficult conversations within the same kind of community, but rural versus urban. It involves many difficult conversations. It was vital that we did that because we were trying to assess to begin with - it was not coming up with this vision for co-operation - whether people believe in and value the thought of co-operation and wanted to co-operate in the first place. If we jump straightaway to this vision and miss out on the attitudes to cross-Border co-operation, we end up perhaps with something that is artificial that does not have real support behind it. That is why the Senator would not have heard of this. We were trying to keep much of this conversation happening in the background quietly.