Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

-----to consider additional actions by the CAB and its counterpart in the North?

At the meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council at the end of January, a decision was apparently made to establish two working groups to look at the issue of the North-South parliamentary body that was proposed in the Good Friday Agreement. Has a deadline been set for the two groups? What sort of timeframe is envisaged?

Like Deputy Kenny, I was in Boyle yesterday and I visited Dundalk a couple of weeks ago. The retail trade is suffering terribly. Would a North-South parliamentary body not offer a useful mechanism for the alignment - in a Border sense - of economic policies between the two parts of the island? I know that the SDLP recently ran a successful conference about an all-island economy. To be honest, I do not think there are many other solutions to restoring stability to trade on both sides of the Border. I have been in the empty shops and have spoken to the traders as well. They are lucky now if five people per day purchase their messages in their shops. It has gone that bad. People can go to ASDA in Enniskillen, where the car parking is free, but if they do their shopping in Sligo town centre, the parking is not free. There is a range of issues we must address and this North-South parliamentary body could be a useful mechanism to do this. Does the Taoiseach have a timeframe for its establishment?

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