Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the programmes which will benefit from the €315,000 increase in Reconciliation and Cooperation on the Island services of his Department as laid out in Budget 2013. [1675/13]

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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With the move to performance budgeting in 2012, the layout of the Estimates has changed. All expenditure is now grouped under departmental programmes which combine administrative and direct expenditure attributable to each area of activity. In the case of Programme C – Reconciliation and Co-operation On This Island, the overall allocation for 2013 is €18.334 million, a slight increase on the allocation for 2012. Overall, the Estimates for 2013 published on 5 December last in respect of my Department show a reduction of some €4.1 million for Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade, compared with the allocation for 2012.

In preparing the budget, every effort was made to protect direct expenditure and the direct programme expenditure allocations, comprising €2.7 million to support the reconciliation and anti-sectarianism funds and €195,000 to support the International Fund for Ireland, remain unchanged. The particular adjustments to Programme C, shown in the Estimates, are the result of an updated estimate of the administrative costs attributable to the programme in light of the experience of the first year of the operation of the new performance budgeting system.

As well as incorporating the overall reduction in administrative funding, there has been some minor redistribution of expenditure across the various administrative subheads. Taking these adjustments together, the revised administrative allocation has then been associated with the relevant programmes according to standard criteria. It is this process that has resulted in a slightly higher figure being assigned to Programme C for 2013.

The Revised Estimates volume, which will be published in the coming weeks, will provide more detailed information on all expenditure. That volume will take account of the 2012 outturn and will also include a number of adjustments, often technical, that are made as part of the budgetary process.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. I welcome the fact there has been an increase in the reconciliation fund from the Department. However, I would like to know where the money is going, what groups avail of it and what type of work they are doing. It would be useful to get that information onto the public record.

This work is vital. As Deputy Smith said, some Members of the House recently visited Belfast and met people from south, north and east Belfast. We saw the actual work taking place on the ground, much of it funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is hugely important work and, if only for selfish reasons, we want to see it continue because the work these groups are doing will determine the type of society, country and people we will be in the future.

The flag flying issue creates problems for many of those groups. At the end of the day, however, reconciliation and equality is not about putting things on the back boiler. Rosa Parks did not one day decide "Oh well. I will sit down the back", and think about when it would suit people to change. Equality is very important to the whole work of reconciliation. It is about shared spaces.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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A question, please.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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It is about people being comfortable working together. That is part of the difficulty in regard to what is happening at the moment on the flag issue.

What is the Minister's view on how the flag issue and what is happening on the streets are affecting those groups? The trouble seems to be happening in isolated areas whereas the work is still going on outside the Belfast area and it is still going on in the Short Strand, in east Belfast and in communities like the Springfield Road, where houses have been attacked. The Minister talked earlier about the importance of politics. What more can we do, as politicians, to make this work, to bring about that shared space and to make people feel comfortable to be involved in this process?

Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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First, in respect of the Estimate, which was the subject of the question, I would be very happy to take the opportunity at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade or the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, if the Deputy wishes, to tease through some of the detail. The 2012 Estimate was the first on which we undertook this performance budgeting. The idea was basically to reflect in the Estimate what the real cost of staff and all resources would be. To some extent, that is a learning experience and, in the adjustments in this year's Estimate, we have learned from this and are coming to the conclusion that we are doing more on the Northern Ireland side than was reflected in the 2012 Estimate. That is just a technical point.

In respect of the issue in Northern Ireland, one of the great strengths of the Good Friday Agreement was the idea of mutual respect - that there are two national identities and there is respect for each. As we move forward, it is critical that we retain that fundamental principle of the Agreement. We also need to understand and to be respectful of people whose identity is British and to be sensitive to that identity, particularly at a time of demographic change in Northern Ireland. Above all, this needs to be done in a collective way by all of the parties in Northern Ireland.

Everybody in Northern Ireland needs to feel at home and needs to feel comfortable, and we need to understand and be sensitive to that. Where we have to draw the line, however, is where the expression of that, or protest about that, spills over into the kind of street violence we have seen in recent times. As the Deputy said, we have to work on the ground in building up local communities and building cross-community relationships. That is where the anti-sectarianism and the peace and reconciliation funding of my Department comes in.