Ms Aingeal O?Donoghue:

I thank the committee for the positive feedback on our work. It is much appreciated and important because, as I said, this needs buy-in across government but also across the Oireachtas and other elected bodies. I talked a little about the North-South Ministerial Council because I was asked about it. It is a challenge for us now and for some of the parties in the Executive. The North-South Ministerial Council is an integral part of the Good Friday Agreement and of the architecture around it. It is also, as Dr. Farry was saying, critical to the delivery of practical work that will benefit people on the island. It is a mixed picture at the moment. It is clear that there are many areas of politics into which the politics of the protocol have now been inserted. We will need to see how that plays out as we get into the next phase with a new leader of the DUP, what will happen in terms of its nomination for First Minister and what approach will be taken.

We continue to push for North-South Ministerial Council meetings and prepare fully for them. We are preparing for our plenary at the moment, even though we do not have a confirmed date. It is certainly something on which we continue to work all the time. While it is not a substitute, there remains good contact at an official level, both through the North-South Ministerial Council and outside that framework.

When it comes to other enablers, I have always been of the view that the more that other voices point to the benefits of North-South co-operation in a practical way, including as many voices as possible from outside the political sphere, the more helpful it will be. The more business is ready and willing to talk about the benefits of operating an all-island economy and the more higher education institutions talk about their appetite for doing more research on the island, the better. That is an important point because it drives a message from a constituency level up to politicians. It also helps to depoliticise some of the issues and to highlight the benefits.

Ms Hanna and I might talk separately about messages in Westminster. We see an east-west dimension to the shared island initiative. The initiative is about the island but there are places where we think there could be a good triangular structure between Dublin, London and Belfast. One of those might be in the area of research and innovation where there is a Westminster wish to see research driven out into the regions. There are a few areas in which we can link in and give Ms Hanna a sense of some of our thinking.