Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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Question 403: To ask the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs if he will provide details of all cross-Border programmes, initiatives, areas of co-operation and so on which his Department is engaging in, or about to engage in, with its counterparts in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6777/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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North/South co-operation is a strategic priority for my Department, particularly in the context of the Good Friday and St Andrew's Agreements. My Department supports and co-funds two North/South Implementation Bodies within its ambit - Waterways Ireland and An Foras Teanga (comprising Foras na Gaeilge and the Ulster-Scots Agency/Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch) - along with the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) in Northern Ireland. Both Implementation Bodies engage in an extensive range of activities in line with their remits with the support of substantial funding from my Department and DCAL. In this context, I participate regularly in meetings of the North/South Ministerial Council in both the Waterways and Language Sectoral Formats.

My Department is also active in a number of other areas of North/South co-operation that come within its remit. These include –

· participation in the British-Irish Council, both in the context of the Sectoral Group on the Misuse of Drugs, which is chaired by the Minister of State at my Department, Mr John Curran, T.D., and the Sectoral Group on Indigenous Languages;

· the joint undertaking by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and the Department of Health and Public Safety in Northern Ireland of the Drugs Use in Ireland and Northern Ireland - Drug Prevalence Survey (the 3rd such survey will be undertaken in 2010/2011);

· provision of co-funding under PEACE III 2007-13 (a contribution of €18.13m in respect of the €50m Priority 1/Theme 2 programme with a focus on reconciling communities in Northern Ireland and the 6 border counties of Ireland with a theme of "acknowledging and dealing with the past") and INTERREG IV 2007-13 (a contribution of €4m in respect of the €10m rural development sub-theme for territorial co-operation covering Northern Ireland, the border region of Ireland and Western Scotland);

· participation in meetings of the North/South Ministerial Council in Agriculture Sectoral Format, as well as information exchange on common issues in relation to rural development, including cross-border network events in co-operation with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Northern Ireland;

· engagement, both formally, particularly through the UK & Ireland Charities Regulators Forum, and informally, on an ongoing basis, with the recently established Charities Commission for Northern Ireland on matters of common interest relating to the regulation of charities operating on the island of Ireland;

· participation in the Small Ferries Project, supported by an EU INTERREG grant of some £230,000 STG, to establish how best to design and build a fleet of small ferries to serve remote communities off the Scottish and Irish/Northern Irish coastlines; and

· provision of support (some €87,800 in 2009) to a cross-border volunteering initiative with the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland, involving the GAA, Voluntary Arts Ireland and the Church of Ireland, with the objective of piloting action research in the area of volunteer recruitment.