Mr. Shane Campbell:

I thank the Fine Gael delegation. I will answer the questions on a couple of areas. I know Mr. Hallewell wishes to come in on a few issues, as does Mr. Johnston and potentially some other colleagues. Senator McGahon asked about food trails. We have just completed a study on food trails and food festivals in our region. It will probably be available later this week on the ICBAN website. We wanted to research what is out there and who is doing what on both sides of the Border. We also wished to engage with these groups on the opportunities they see to upscale those initiatives into a regional offering. The feedback is very much that community initiatives such as food trails and food festivals are currently paused because of the pandemic but they want to get up and running again, re-engage with their markets and enhance those opportunities before considering regionalising. The linkages with those food trails and food festivals are very often with local authorities. They have all been very supportive and are all buying into the idea. They welcome the intervention of ICBAN on behalf of the eight member councils in looking at this as a key opportunity for food tourism, if one likes, in our area. We have also drawn on best practice and international good practices and experience to help in that regard through work with internships in Queens University Belfast. This is an area that is certainly an opportunity for our region in the future and it is something we wish to build and draw on, but it may be a year or two before we can get into that.

On the questions in respect of greenways and how to play a role in that regard, I will let Mr. Hallewell discuss some of our initiatives and what we have been doing.

As regards broadband investment in Northern Ireland, there has been €78 million of investment from the Government into Northern Ireland and there is investment by the big telecommunication companies such as BT, among others, which is not as easy to quantify. That has taken us to a certain level of service but there are black spots. The Project Stratum programme will invest €165 million but that still leaves a shortfall. We hoped it would have completed the delivery but there will still be hard-to-reach areas without access to broadband. The Northern Ireland Audit Office report that we helped to initiate identifies that a sum of €14 million should be clawed back from BT to the Government as a result of the investments to date.

If that was brought back it would also make a significant inroad.

The local authorities, through the growth deal strategy are targeting how investments in 5G can enhance productivity among SMEs and the industries of our region. It will be interesting to see what will happen after the conclusion of Project Stratum's £165 million. I am not sure how many, but there are premises that will be without connections so it will need further investment and a £14 million claw-back would certainly help in that regard.

I will ask my colleague, Mr. Hallewell, to speak on the natural infrastructure and how we may look to fund that, particularly around PEACE PLUS.