Mr. Eoghan Duffy:

Further to Deputy Lawless's question on the dialogues, the Taoiseach announced the shared Ireland dialogue series on 22 October. This will start later this month, with the first dialogue on new generations and new voices under the Good Friday Agreement. As mentioned by the Taoiseach, there are 1.3 million people on the island who have been born since 1988 and who have a huge role to play in the future of what it will look like. The first dialogue will give prominence to their voices, ideas and concerns. From there, there will be a regular series of dialogues, roughly once a month well into next year and operating across two overall strands. The first strand will focus on the theme of building a shared island and will look at practical areas of co-operation and connection on the island, whether to do with the environment, education and training in the area of health, cross-Border employment and, of course, the all-island economy. The second strand will be around the theme of deepening the relationships under the Good Friday Agreement and will look at some of the key concerns in this regard in recent years and into the future, including identity, cultural exchange and barriers to reconciliation. There will be a different thematic focus in the context of different dialogues on a regular basis well into next year, bringing people together across the island on a representative basis to engage with these themes. Obviously, the engagement will take place online for the foreseeable future. When it becomes possible to engage in person, they will be representative dialogues. We are hoping - we are already seeing this response - that they will prompt, foster and encourage much broader and deeper engagement in civil society from people to provide their views on these really important themes. We will be recording each theme and making it available to inform broader public discourse and considerations in Government. I hope I have given a sense of what the series will look like.