Rose Conway-Walsh on the Good Friday Agreement and the Shared Island
Rose Conway-Walsh addressed the Programme for Government commitment to implementing the Good Friday Agreement, welcoming its provision for a referendum on Irish unity and the strengthening of the shared island unit. She urged that investment and departmental targets be focused on securing and increasing competitiveness and productivity, and pressed for clarity on how those targets will be measured and reported.
Programme for Government commitment
She welcomed the Programme for Government's pledge to implement the Good Friday Agreement in all of its parts, including provision for a referendum on Irish unity, and framed that commitment as central to the shared island work.
Shared island unit and investment
She praised the enhancement of the shared island unit and said investment in initiatives and projects must aim to secure competitiveness and increase productivity, especially in light of geopolitical turbulence.
Departmental targets and reporting
She asked how departmental targets will be defined and measured, whether those targets will feed back to the Taoiseach, and whether updates will be provided on a quarterly basis to ensure accountability.
Taxation of cross-border workers
She raised ongoing issues around the taxation of workers, noting difficulties faced by cross-border bodies and their employees and the need for resolution between the two departments of finance.
Reconciliation and non-political approach
She emphasised prioritising reconciliation, arguing the shared island work has been advanced in a non-political way that has won widespread acceptance across communities in Northern Ireland and that this approach should be retained as the initiative moves forward.
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I welcome in the Programme for Government your commitment to implementing the Good Friday Agreement in all of its parts, and obviously that includes provision for a referendum on Irish unity. But I welcome the enhancement of the shared island unit, and I want to just say how important it is, in light of the geopolitical turbulence that we see, that the investment in the initiatives and the projects has to be to create, to secure our competitiveness or increase our competitiveness and our productivity. And I want to ask you, I welcome as well the departmental targets. I want to ask you, how will that pan out in terms of the targets within the departments? How will they be measured, and will they feed back to yourself, and will we have an update on those every quarter? How will it work? Again, what we're for is a shared island, what we're for is, I think there's really substance in this initiative on the dialogue front, research front, and on the investment front, which will bring people together. It's about reconciliation, and I think we have to prioritize reconciliation. There are issues around taxation of workers, which we're trying to resolve for some time between the two departments of finance, and the cross-border bodies in particular, some of them have had real difficulty with their employees in that regard. And I think Deputy Rosconi mentioned the geopolitical turbulence, I think, you know, we are making a lot of progress here. I think we have to continue to build on the progress that we've made. We've done it in a non-political way, to be frank. We haven't used shared island as a Trojan horse for anything, and that's been important in terms of gaining widespread societal acceptance in Northern Ireland. And it has gained widespread acceptance from all communities, and I want to retain that ingredient in terms of moving this forward. Thank you.
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