Dr. Conor Patterson:

Local authorities have lots of ambition not only in the east Border region where I practice my business, but throughout the Border region. The problem is the lack of budget and authority. I look back to the period in the immediate aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement when there was institutional innovation and the principles built into it. Perhaps one of the unspoken successes of the peace process was the commitment to subsidiarity and local partnerships holding real budgetary responsibility and being able to innovate policy and interventions. At local level, the north west is very different from the mid-Border region, which is different again from the east Border region. The local players and stakeholders know what is needed in each area. They just need to be empowered by several Government institutions working alongside them. They are not seeking to displace them. In my experience, the memorandum of understanding between Newry and Mourne District Council, Down District Council, and Louth County Council, signed in Brussels in 2010, lacked budgetary teeth and the regulatory powers to institute anything significant. The ambition and will are there but the power is lacking.