Ms Aingeal O?Donoghue:

I will start with the A5 project. The Government sees this as a key piece of infrastructure for the north west. That has always been the rationale behind the support for the A5 and the Irish Government remains wholly committed to it. It was in the New Decade, New Approach agreement and in the revised national development plan, NDP. When we talked about connectedness on the island, we gave particular priority to the A5. As the Deputy well knows, it has been mired in a range of planning and legal processes for more than ten years now. As I understand it, there is some progress in that the planning inquiry is due to resume on 15 May. However, I do not have a line of sight on when the inquiry will come out with its report. The commitment is there, and as the Taoiseach put it recently, once we can see the pathway to the actual delivery of the A5, we can then engage on the funding commitments, but it is simply not feasible at this point without knowing that the project is cleared to go ahead. It becomes very difficult for us to put figures on support at this point. We remain in close contact with our northern colleagues in the Department for Infrastructure. We continue to follow the project development and there is an overarching commitment to it. However, there is a timing question about when a figure would be put on that. That timing is out of our hands because it is in the hands of the processes in Northern Ireland. I will have to come back to the Deputy on the pieces on our side of the Border. There have been discussions about it with our Department of Transport.

Regarding the all-Ireland economy more broadly, we work very closely with IBEC and we have frequent meetings. We find IBEC's reports to be very helpful. The voice of business was probably one of the very first voices to speak about the importance of co-operation on the island, going way back. While we continue to work with IBEC in terms of its proposals, planning for more planned growth is where you come up against, to a certain extent, the absence of the Northern Ireland Executive. There are certain things we can do and we are focusing on areas such as skills and innovation and looking at developing an enterprise proposal around the shared island initiative, which are all part of the work. To a certain extent, planning for growth has to involve the Executive on the other side as well.

The other point is that, as we all know, the way trade operates on the island is not just about exports and imports but also about supply chains and companies that operate on both sides of the island. We have also seen a very significant increase in all-island trade since Brexit. We would feel that with the Windsor Framework now in place and, we hope, a clear and certain path for Northern Ireland business, that would contribute to new investment into Northern Ireland. It is also an opportunity for the SME sector in Northern Ireland to trade on the island using its advantages under the Windsor Framework. There are a number of strands to it.