CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

The authors of a new study of cross-border co-operation from the Centre for Cross Border Studies conclude that at the "micro-level" the North/South institutions set up by the Good Friday Agreement are beginning to work, despite the continuing crises over policing and decommissioning.

The study - Creating Living Institutions: EU Cross-Border Co-operation after the Good Friday Agreement - is by Professor Brigid Laffan and Dr Diane Payne of the Institute for British-Irish Studies at University College Dublin.

It will be launched by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Brian Cowen, in Newman House, 85 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday 9 May.

The study also says that the British Exchequer will have to be persuaded to provide funding to match the IR£650 million committed by the Irish Government to the North/South 'Common Chapter' of the development plans of the two Irish jurisdictions. It says the Special EU Programmes Body, one of the cross-border 'implementation bodies' set up under the Good Friday Agreement, will be well-placed to advocate the all-island dimension of cross-border co-operation through the Common Chapter.

Professor Laffan and Dr Payne conclude: "Notwithstanding the crisis-prone nature of the process and the continuing intractability of issues such as decommissioning and policing, the findings of this study suggest that the new political institutions can bed down and become 'living institutions."

"The risk taking and experimentation involved in establishing new political arrangements and channels of politics have the capacity to deliver the objective of routine public policy making between North and South. The allocation of public monies and arcane battles about delivery mechanisms can become the stuff of politics. Low key functional policy co-operation and processes of institutionalisation may progress even in an unstable and crisis prone political environment."

Noting that the Special EU Programmes Body has been given a "dual mandate relating to its all-Ireland role and its Border Region role", the authors stress that "balancing this dual role will require a careful assessment of just how its all-island mandate should be fostered."

The authors suggest that the greatest potential for the SEUPB to play an all-island role "lies in the Common Chapter contained in the development plans for both jurisdictions." The Common Chapter - which is identical in both the Irish and the Northern Irish 2000-2006 development plans - covers those economic and social sectors where the two administrations believe cross-border co-operation can be most beneficially applied.

The SEUPB has "the financial resources to study the obstacles to the creation of a seamless border in public policy terms", say the authors. Its new chief executive, former Omagh district council chief executive John McKinney, will be well placed to "act as the advocate of seamless public policy making in both jurisdictions."

The Laffan-Payne study analyses the interaction between the new North/South institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement - notably the North/South Ministerial Council and the Special EU Programmes Body - and the EU's funding programme for cross-border co-operation, INTERREG.

It notes that "one of the expectations of the Good Friday Agreement is that the institutions and processes that it has set in train may lead to the normalisation of the border", as is the case in other previously contested European border regions. It points out that the European Commission has fostered a model of cross-border co-operation based on funding, links between institutions, partnership and 'bottom up' mobilisation of groups in border areas.

One of the key questions the study addresses is how the context and practice of co-operation across the Irish border, assisted by the INTERREG programme, has changed with the establishment of the new North/South institutions created by the Good Friday Agreement.

It notes the European Commission's criticism of government departments' centralised management of earlier INTERREG programmes, which had led to only a small number of genuinely cross-border programmes being funded. Projects tended to be funded by each Department in line with the priorities of each jurisdiction. Many infrastructure projects funded in the South had little impact on border regions or cross-border co-operation. In the North there were accusations that the Department of Finance and Personnel wanted to keep a tight control over EU funding, despite the emergence of the new Special EU Programmes Body.

The study also anticipates the arrival of a significant new actor on the Irish cross-border scene: the three cross-border local authority networks which group 12 borough and district councils in Northern Ireland and six county councils in the Republic. These networks have been pressing for a role in the management and allocation of the new cross-border INTERREG programme, until now the preserve of the Department of Finance in Dublin and the Department of Finance and Personnel in Belfast.

The study reports that an 'action team' set up by the North's Minister of Finance, Mark Durkan, recommended that the cross-border networks - expanded to bring in 50 per cent representation from social partnership groups - should get "a substantive allocation of funds" and should be recognised as "a source of authoritative consultation" for the 2001-2006 INTERREG programme. This was agreed to in principle by the North/South Ministerial Council on 9 April.

Further information from:

Prof. Brigid Laffan Tel. 086-8195793

Dr Diane Payne Tel. 01-716 8506

Carmel Coyle, Research Administrator, Institute for British Irish Studies Tel. 01-716 8670

Andy Pollak, Director, Centre for Cross Border Studies Tel. 028-3751-1550(from Republic of Ireland: 048-3751-1550) Mobile: 0771-5042122 (0044-771 from Republic)

The Centre for Cross Border Studies, based in Armagh, was set up in September 1999 to research and develop co-operation across the Irish border in education, health, business, public administration, communications and a range of other practical areas. It is a joint initiative by Queen's University Belfast, Dublin City University and the Workers Educational Association (Northern Ireland), and is funded by the EU Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. Between February and May 2001 the Centre is publishing research reports on cross-border telecommunications, cross-border health services, all-Ireland co-operation to tackle disadvantage in adult education, and EU cross-border funding before and after the Good Friday Agreement.