Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms O'Donoghue and Mr. Duffy for their presentation. The Community Foundation for Ireland will provide over €15 million in grants to communities. They are exploring future all-Ireland co-operation between community, voluntary and charity groups post Brexit. It has contacted some of us for clarification on the role the unit emphasises for civic society engagement; the possible role for philanthropy, and facilitating such all-island engagement between groups; and the willingness of the Government to use matched funding opportunities between the public and private sector to support civic engagement, in particular in those communities most impacted by the Border. It has been announced the reconciliation funding through the Department of Foreign Affairs will be realigned. Is the Government in a position to provide an update on this? If answers to these are not to hand today, the witnesses can email a response.

The presentation referred to the research project with the ESRI. More specific to the Community Foundation for Ireland's questions is the work that was going to be carried out by the National Economic and Social Council. Built into that is engagement with civic society groups. I look forward to a response on that.

Access to the north west has been mentioned. It is accepted, without myself or Senator Blaney being parochial, that nowhere on the island has been more affected by partition than the region now known as the north west city region, encompassing Donegal and the Derry City and Strabane District Council area.

A crucial objective for us is to have improvement in rail, road and air infrastructure in the region. My concern about comments that have been made about rail is that the talk is about the Belfast-Dublin-Cork connections. The difficulty is, where does that connect to Sligo, Donegal and Derry? With the focus on climate change and all those challenges, rail has come back onto the agenda again after being parked in recent years. There is the campaign in the west of Ireland on the western track. I believe there is a ready-made campaign in the west to connect from Cork up to Derry. That would be critical to our region. I seek clarification on early thinking about that.

The funding of the A5 has been raised. It is important that when that project finally gets over the line next year, the money is available to move it forward quickly. There is also the support for the City of Derry Airport. Some 40% of the passengers who use City of Derry Airport are from Donegal, which is a large percentage. There has been no financial support from the Irish Government for almost a decade. It is unacceptable. It is not just about connecting Derry to Dublin, but connecting the world to Derry and the north-west region. One can fly into Dublin or Belfast and get a connecting flight. It is about interconnectivity by air, so I cannot stress enough the importance of supporting the City of Derry Airport under this shared island approach.