Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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I thank the deputation for its presentation. It is good to hear from it. We heard submissions here about the A5 in July. The committee is active in pursuing that with the Government. I know it is not directly part of the presentation today.

My questions are similar to those of Deputy Conlan. What have been the blockages? In the past five or six years during the recession in the South, attention has probably been drawn away from cross-Border issues and co-operation and there has been a focus on the 26 counties rather than on the all-island approach. I think this has been detrimental to Donegal and the entire region. We must try to get that back on track and get the Government to focus more on the Border areas.

The witnesses say that the objectives have not been delivered. Is there is a list of other objectives that are outstanding? Could the witnesses expand on those in terms of the gateway initiative? How will the reorganisation of the councils in the six counties affect the work of the cross-Border group? Will it expand the area? The presentation stated that the extent of co-operation was unclear to those working at local authority level. What is the group doing to tackle that as well because it is important across all the councils to make sure that people are fully aware of what is happening in terms of co-operation? I have no doubt that the committee will be quite happy to do whatever it can to raise awareness and get the strategic framework accepted and implemented both North and South and at Government level here in the South.