Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was very glad to attend the event in my hometown in Cavan last week where the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, launched the special funding to assist local authorities to prepare programmes. It was great to have people of all political views from 23 local authorities there representing their communities. There was an extremely warm welcome for the shared island funding. The only thing I heard of was people coming forward with more projects that need more funding, so it is widely welcomed. The Taoiseach and I previously discussed the opportunity to develop our further education sector on an all-Ireland, cross-Border basis. I had the opportunity to visit the new campus in South West College in Enniskillen some months ago, and it was warmly embracing the idea of the shared island and doing work together.

Similar to Deputy Durkan, I wish the mindset and thinking on progressing the shared island initiative would be shared throughout all our Departments and statutory agencies because it is not acceptable that students attending colleges in Northern Ireland and Britain cannot get the once-off fees contribution announced in the budget.

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