Ireland has well established arrangements for bilateral engagement with the UK, including structures established under the Good Friday Agreement and as a result of the 2012 Joint Statement between the Taoiseach and the UK Prime Minister.
On 11 April 2017 I met Joe Fitzpatrick, Scottish Minister for Parliamentary Business, who was in Dublin for a series of meetings and with whom I discussed a range of issues, including the Ireland/Northern Ireland/Scotland INTERREG Programme.
Last October I met Mark Drakeford, Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to discuss the Ireland/Wales INTERREG programme, and my officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in the Welsh European Funding Office in relation to the Programme.
I had regular contacts with Máirtín Ó Muilleoir while he was Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland. These took place in the context of Plenary and Sectoral meetings of the North South Ministerial Council as well as bilaterally, and Máirtín and I visited Derry in December to see some of the projects funded by the PEACE and INTERREG programmes. I look forward to resumed contacts with the Minister for Finance once the institutions are restored. In the meantime, my officials continue to work closely with their Northern Ireland counterparts on the implementation of the programmes.
In all of these contacts I have been clear about the Irish Government's commitment to the successful implementation of the PEACE and INTERREG Programmes and to successor programmes post-2020. I am pleased, therefore, that on 28 October 2016 I was able to announce that agreement had been reached with the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and the Welsh European Funding Office on a safeguard clause that will Brexit-proof letters of offer to programme beneficiaries.
There is regular contact between my colleague Michael Noonan and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they spoke by phone on 29 March 2017 following the triggering of Article 50.
