Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On the first matter, I agree that I would have rather seen the civic forum established far sooner. It requires political sponsorship and support. As the Deputy knows, we have been working through the North-South Ministerial Council in an effort to carry out whatever preparations people wanted in order to establish the scope of the issues. This is not an area of activity like social partnership that has developed in the Republic. This is not a feature of public life in Northern Ireland as it has become here in terms of how we operate and how we give a greater deal of participation to various groups in respect of policy formulation like the National Economic and Social Forum, the National Economic and Social Council and other such representative bodies that get a very broad breadth of opinion into the area of public policy issues.

Going back as far as the time when I was Minister for Foreign Affairs and up to today, I would have liked to have seen the civic forum established far sooner. I believe it has a contribution to make. It is a confidence building measure and it would also emphasise the many problems that are best solved in common rather than separately and from which we can learn best practice in a range of areas. It is meant to comprise representatives of the business, trade union and voluntary sectors, and such other sectors as agreed by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. As the Deputy will be aware, that office has taken some time to bed in particularly following the changeover since the retirement of Dr. Paisley. I am glad to say that hiatus period now seems to be behind us, when many issues were not being dealt with and the Executive was not even meeting.

The Deputy also asked me whether I accept that once a year is sufficient for meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council and the answer is "No"; I do not. Obviously there are many ministerial meetings that occur bilaterally within the various Departments, involving Ministers with responsibility for education, health, local development and so forth. They also involve the Minister for Foreign Affairs. There was this hiatus period of which we are all aware, which would have been a reason for not holding a North-South Ministerial Council meeting in the second half of 2008. It is now agreed that this will take place on 23 January 2009.

The Deputy also asked me about the North-South parliamentary body. I understand that the Speaker in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Ceann Comhairle have begun a process which gives some momentum to that issue and we hope that under the respective leadership of Mr. Hay and the Ceann Comhairle, Deputy John O'Donoghue, we can see the establishment of that committee far sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

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