Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 May 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

Development and Co-operation in Border Counties: Discussion (Resumed)

2:10 pm

Mr. Peter Sheridan:

I will answer that and then perhaps I might be excused, along with my colleague, as we are on the train back to Belfast and if I miss it, I will miss the connection to Derry.

That would leave me home at some stage in the middle of the night even if there was a train to get there.

The Chairman mentioned Altnagelvin Hospital, with which I am familiar. There is no doubt that access to INTERREG, which has allowed this co-operation and partnership to grow, has had a positive impact on rural isolated communities in counties like Donegal and Leitrim. It has enabled people in peripheral areas to access services. I agree that it is hard to see how the gaps that would exist in the absence of access to INTERREG would be filled. We are probably still at the beginning of the process of people having confidence in being able to share services between councils and so on. Now that Brexit has put the brakes on this process, people are more concerned about Brexit than they are about the areas of co-operation that were probably going to happen through good neighbourliness as the peace process continued to bed in.