Dr. Anthony Soares:

The value of the conversation is enormous. It is essential that people have dialogue about co-operation. One thing that I would stress is that we as community organisations, both North and South, are involved in trying to engage with all sorts of bodies and with decision makers within the Commission, the UK Government, a specialised committee, a joint committee, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Irish Government, particularly through the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the North-South Ministerial Council. We at the Centre for Cross Border Studies are fortunate because we can use some of our core funding to undertake all of these numerous engagements. They are engagements to ensure that we maintain the necessary conditions for North-South co-operation and also east-west co-operation and relations. Many other organisations are not resourced to do that. They are involved in numerous engagements. There is a question of resources. They are engaging in these conversations, which are taking them away from what they are funded to do, which is normally delivery of essential services and essential work.

I stress that conversations are great and we must keep dialogue going continually as part of the peace and reconciliation process, but there is significant frustration. The conversation must lead to action and we must see joint action, with us working as a civic society group with political leaders and representatives, so that we can see these issues being progressed. If we cannot see concrete action being undertaken and progress being made, then it leads to frustration and community organisations starting to withdraw. That is a significant risk to North-South co-operation. We are starting to see some indications from organisations of pressure they face and the changing circumstances they see in the political landscape of both North-South and east-west co-operation.

They are starting to feel the pressures to focus on the work within their own jurisdiction due to the enormous amount of energy that is needed for it and the lack of resources. If the political conditions are not conducive to or encouraging of co-operation or if community organisations are not asked to be involved in these types of co-operations, there will be a risk of people going back to those days when we turned our backs on one another. Conversations that just lead to further conversations and not to concrete action, in addition to the pressures on resources, are issues which we need to be concerned about and need to address together.