Ms ?mer Deane:

On the all-island economy, the planning issue is not something that we have looked at specifically. Much of the work of the shared island fund is about developing, boosting and underpinning the all-island economy. For instance, in the latest round, one of the headline programmes will be to get the three enterprise agencies on the island to work together for the first time and to identify where they have shared objectives. We already know that they are looking at the areas of female entrepreneurship, clustering, and business supports for SMEs in the area of innovation. As work develops in that space, we can perhaps also ask the agencies to come to us if they see obstacles in carrying out their work. From a shared island unit perspective, we listen to what the Departments and agencies tell us where they see an opportunity to build on a cross-Border, all-island basis, to remove obstacles to efficiencies and to build the all-island economy. I am not aware of any proposal from any entity that has come to us yet about planning.