Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The answer is "Yes". Such practical co-operation is precisely the sort of thing to which a forum could lend inter-community support. The idea of the civic forum is to articulate support from within the communities for these type of initiatives and to stretch policy makers in making responses commensurate with the articulated aspirations. This is precisely the value of a civic forum with a structured dialogue of that nature.

Even prior to the Good Friday Agreement, there was a lot of practical co-operation in the health area among others. I refer to the CAWT initiative between the three health board regions in the north east and north west and the health authorities on the other side of the Border, which has enabled people to look at practical arrangements for dialysis treatments. People from County Louth and the Cooley peninsula attend the hospital in Newry. I have visited there in the past with Séamus Mallon and seen the practical aspects of that co-operation and how we use taxpayers' funds to greater effect by co-operating and avoiding duplication of services in natural hinterlands across the Border area and across the island in the case of more specialised tertiary treatments.

These are obvious areas which would have the full support of everybody in the community. I refer to Science Foundation Ireland in the area of education, where collaboration between universities North and South is not only promoted but in some cases is a criterion for accessing money and research funding in order to ensure the best possible outcome for taxpayers' commitments in these areas. There is a plethora of areas of co-operation which have only been touched upon. We need the confidence in the political system to get on with that agenda which is neither surreptitious nor conspiratorial, nor acquisitive but is simply concerned with sensible arrangements one would expect between good neighbours and of good relationships between parallel Administrations on the island of Ireland in the interests of providing better services for all the people we serve.

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