Ms Julie Sinnamon:

I will deal specifically with the cross-Border issue and will then ask Tom Hayes, our regional director, to talk about the service level agreement with the LEOs.

Enterprise Ireland works very closely with both InterTradeIreland and Invest Northern Ireland and we offer all of the leadership programmes we run for companies here to Northern Ireland companies. We meet a number of times a year with Invest Northern Ireland to discuss how we can work together to help companies on both sides of the Border. On programmes such as Horizon 2020, for example, we liaise with them in order to help them maximise the draw down of those funds. In the past two weeks, we had our second trade mission under the Invest Northern Ireland, UK Trade and Investment, UKTI, and Enterprise Ireland banner in the Gulf at the Arab Health Exhibition & Congress. All sides worked together on this. This co-operation is valued by companies both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. Interestingly, Invest Northern Ireland recently tendered for one of its own development programmes, which was won by DCU which previously would have run programmes for us that Invest Northern Ireland clients win also. There is strong collaboration between both sides, to the benefit of companies on both sides of the Border.