Ms Alison Hough:

The Deputy is entirely correct that the North–South Ministerial Council is really where it is at in terms of North–South co-operation. The environment, in particular, is an important part of the remit of the council. Since the environment is an area of devolved competence, the role is even more important. We are somewhat bereft of a really important opportunity owing to the absence of the Executive and, therefore, the North–South Ministerial Council. This is why it is even more important to go back to the drawing board and try to think originally about what we can do with what we have left in terms of the other institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, which were neglected because the council was so effective in covering these areas. Can we examine the other bodies and beef them up in terms of replacing the avenues of co-operation and dialogue that have been lost and are sorely needed?

The absence of an executive has been ameliorated somewhat by the extension of powers of civil servants. Senior civil servants in Northern Ireland have been given extended powers by the United Kingdom to represent and negotiate on behalf of their Departments. They have some of the powers Ministers would originally have had in order to fill the vacuum of power. That, in itself, however, is not a great solution. It is a bad solution to bad problem. We can only hope that the vacuum will be filled. In the absence of resolution, we need to focus on the other bodies, particularly the British–Irish Council and British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference.

The points made on environmental crime are really important. It was said cross-Border environmental crime is quite bad now when we have full EU membership on both sides of the Border and full regulatory alignment. We have a problem with full, coherent environmental management as things are. How much worse will it be in the event of Brexit, be it a withdrawal-agreement Brexit or, worse, a no-deal Brexit. Things can only get worse from there. Regardless of what is happening with Brexit, we need to reinforce our corporation. There is no effective cross-Border co-operation in the area of environmental crime. We need to consider this. It comes within the remit of the Good Friday Agreement because the environment is one of the areas it covers. This is something we can do something about now in preparation for whatever comes with Brexit, such that we will have our house in order. The Republic needs to work on this as much as Northern Ireland. We talked about the Northern Ireland regulator but there is cross-Border crime emanating from the Republic that we need to tackle. We need to get our own house in order also. We really need to direct more resources towards this. Consider the latest incidents of large-scale industrial dumping taking place around Kingscourt in County Cavan and elsewhere. There are some examples of such bad practices on both sides of the Border. It is really important that we do something about that.