Ms Aingeal O?Donoghue:

I thank the Senator and the Deputy for their questions. I will say something on the council and then ask Mr. Duffy to come in on the dialogue in a little more detail.

Clearly, the council is a critical part of the architecture of the Good Friday Agreement. Following a plenary meeting of the council at the end of July, we had a full round of North-South Ministerial Council sectoral meetings last autumn. We then had another plenary meeting in December. It was virtual but it was a good meeting and there were good outcomes. Obviously, there is politicisation around the North-South Ministerial Council right now with what we might call a mixed record of participation. It has not stopped but a number of the sectoral meetings have not happened. Some of them did not happen when originally planned to and some have not happened at all. It was welcome to see the transport ministerial meeting happen on 5 May. It was one of the ones which had been postponed and is actually particularly critical, given a lot of the infrastructure work I was talking about. We have to see how this plays out, particularly around a plenary meeting we are aiming to have again this summer. We will continue to push forward with our work and try to work with the Executive in whatever ways we can. Obviously, certain things should go to the North-South Ministerial Council and we are certainly keen to see issues dealt with and formally discussed there but we can also look at other ways of working, as necessary. Thus, it is potentially impactful but for the moment we have been able to keep the work moving forward. I have given a little of the sense of the dialogues but I ask Mr. Duffy to come in at this point.