Vol. 512 No. 6
249 Cecilia Keaveney asked the Minister for Health and Children the increased interaction, if any, envisaged with Northern health authorities in view of the setting up of the Northern Ireland Executive; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26830/99]
I was very pleased to take part in yesterday's inaugural meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council in Armagh where I met, along with the other Ministers, my counterpart, Minister Bairbre de Brún. At the meeting, a number of proposals for further co-operation in the health sector which had been identified as priority areas to be taken forward were agreed to be pursued within the context of the council meeting in health sector format early in the new year.
There is, of course, already a long tradition of North-South interaction between Ministers for Health and between the Department of Health and Children in Dublin and the Department of Health and Social Services in Belfast. Since the early 1980s, my predecessors and I and the British Ministers then responsible for health matters have met on a regular, informal basis, alternately in Belfast and Dublin, to exchange information on policy issues, review progress in areas in which co-operation arrangements exist between their two Departments and share information on a number of other issues of mutual interest.
I am also aware that informal co-operative arrangements have long been in operation on a day-to-day basis between the health authorities, North and South, along the Border area. A major focus for cross-Border interaction at local level is the co-operation and working together initiative, CAWT, which will assume even greater importance under the new administrative arrangements.
