Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It is unfortunate that the necessary trust and confidence one would have expected to have been built up in respect of the mutual benefit of North-South co-operation is still not universally understood, accepted or comprehended by various shades of political opinion. This is clearly unfortunate. However, it does not take away from the fact that on any objective analysis, and there have been such analyses carried out during the period when the executive was in position, progress was made in promoting and providing examples where North-South co-operation clearly made considerable sense. Considerable progress was also evident outside the structures, for example, in the energy sector. It is obvious that there is a range of tangible outputs that could benefit from genuine co-operation, for example, the areas of transport, energy, education, health and spatial planning. We have witnessed the co-operation and working together initiative, which was the first cross-Border initiative in health. Although this initiative is on a small scale, it indicates what can be achieved. For example, people in Cooley go to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry for renal dialysis so a considerable amount of practical co-operation across jurisdictions is taking place, which should be the forerunner to far wider provision. We have seen this in the cancer care strategy, where we are trying to finalise arrangements that would be more suitable for people in the north west than would be the case were they to travel to Dublin, Cork or somewhere else. A considerable amount of work is ongoing. When people take the politics out of it, it would be far better if we could promote it to demonstrate that cancer incidence would be reduced and availability of cancer care improved, an area in which much progress has been achieved in recent months although it has not yet been finalised. Hopefully, it will soon be successfully finalised.

Practical co-operation can also exist in the area of environmental protection. The question of whether it would be the responsibility of an island-wide agency is open to question because the issue really concerns co-operation rather than getting caught up in structures. It is the substance of the co-operation that is important. There may be certain regulatory differentiations between both jurisdictions which might militate against an island-wide organisation. However, both jurisdictions co-operate in many areas, for example, waste management strategy. The question of whether an island-wide waste strategy can be used to deal with commercial or hazardous waste is an obvious opportunity to avoid duplication and the waste of resources and to establish more effective initiatives.

Cross-Border co-operation can be used across all major activities, including physical infrastructure, which is an obvious candidate. The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference indicated last month that both Governments, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, MP, are committed to exploring the potential for joint investment in key infrastructural projects which affect both sides of the Border.

Under the north-west gateway initiative, the National Roads Authority and its counterpart in Northern Ireland are currently engaged in a joint study of various options and will consider the action that is appropriate on foot of this study. People are also aware of the existence of assistance of €7.5 million, which was provided by the Exchequer towards the development of the City of Derry Airport. Where the political will has existed, co-operation has taken place. I hope this political will will increase rather than decrease and lead to more cross-Border co-operation.

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