Dr. Stephen Farry:

I thank the Chairman. I very much welcome the opportunity and it is good to see Ms O'Donoghue and Mr. Duffy again. I had a good meeting with them only a few weeks ago in Belfast so I am happy to continue the dialogue. It is important to get a sense of the potential of the shared island unit. It is something I very much welcome and I welcome the comments made by An Taoiseach in his recent keynote address as well. In addition to the dialogue issue, I am sensing that the main intervention here, not least given the relatively few staff the unit has, is one of steering and co-ordination and ensuring the different levers of Governments are pointing in the right direction in terms of maximising the degree of co-operation and collaboration that can happen on an all-island basis.

There are two angles I want to highlight today. The first one is around what one might term protecting what we already have, with Brexit being the key threat in that respect. The second angle is then some of the new opportunities we could take forward. On Brexit itself, we still do not know whether we are talking about a no-deal situation or, hopefully and more realistically, some sort of flimsy deal with a lot of questions still unaddressed. To what extent are there plans across Government essentially to revisit the mapping exercise that was done a couple of years ago that fed into the joint report of, I think, 2017, particularly given that we do not know exactly how the fallout from the decisions, or non-decisions, taken over the coming weeks will impact upon areas of co-operation? I am mindful of things like the service economy which may be hindered and may not be addressed by a goods-based free trade agreement at this stage, and how we protect existing levels of interaction both in services and the flow of people across the Border due to life, work, sport and other things like that.

The second thing, which Ms O'Donoghue is already aware of, is around things like medicines. Both Ms Hanna and I were at the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee yesterday talking about what is going to happen with medicine. While we have potentially a 12-month derogation from the falsified medicines directive as part of the implementation of Brexit, beyond that we are likely to see a major reorientation of medicines supply chains into Northern Ireland through Ireland rather than through Great Britain. Those impacts are issues that Governments across the island perhaps need to factor through how that is going to work in practice. Very briefly, looking at some of the new opportunities, I echo the points made about climate change and around renewables. I see that as being a major area where we can really scale up the level of North-South collaboration.

A grander one, if I could put it on people's radar, is around things like fire and rescue services. I was speaking to the unions in Northern Ireland today and they were saying they have some bilateral arrangements with some counties in the South but it is not a uniform agreement across the island. That is something where there could be a fairly quick early win where increased collaboration is concerned.

The final point is around the 2040 national planning framework, which is perhaps an area that needs to be revisited. I apologise if I have put my two feet in it by raising that, given it is probably something that has been very carefully worked out to date. It strikes me, however, that a lot of the fresh talk we are now seeing around North-South collaboration, such as on transport and the rail infrastructure, is not really factored into that document as strongly as it could be. It is probably not looking sufficiently at the potential for collaboration on the island, and that may be something worth revisiting either by the Irish Government or by both Governments on the island.