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Lord Shutt of Greetland: I appreciate the difficulty of responding to the barrage of questions and so forth. However, I wonder whether the noble Baroness had the opportunity to think a little about a more encouraging and convincing response to the juxtaposition of the railway and tourism issues, to which I referred.

Baroness Amos: It is important to identify the roles that the Government and the tourism authorities have in relation to that issue. I will take the issue away and look at it again. I was very grateful for the fact that the noble Lord felt that I had not had a hand in the reply. Of course, I signed off the reply, which means that I was happy with it, but I will go back and probe further.

Lord Laird: I want to ask the Minister again on some of the issues about which we talked. She talked about

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Waterways Ireland, the entries of 40 per cent for its cross-border implementation body and the fact that that relates to a new headquarters. As I understand it, the whole concept of care and maintenance is to see what happens to the political process. It is quite clear in the Belfast agreement and the legislation that there can be no cross-border bodies if there is no Assembly. Why then was Waterways Ireland allocated money for a headquarters that may not come into being? That is not care and maintenance; it goes far beyond that.

The noble Baroness may say, "Well, it has not been signed off by the North/South Ministerial Council", which is a fair point. If so, why were the same standards not applied to us? Why did we not have money set aside, even if it may not have been signed off by the council? The issue has not been resolved but, at the end of the day, the budget that we got was one authorised by the Irish in November.

I am sorry to say that there is no answer to the point that there was no consultation with the agency about the budget. Therefore, no one in the sponsoring departments can say that the budget is adequate to keep us going on the same lines. It is not. It means that we have to cancel policies. However, I can understand that the department does not know that because, after six months, it has not consulted us.

It would seem a sensible point of government procedure from what it is hoped is today's open government that, if someone is carrying out the work and you suddenly decide that they have the expertise to carry it out, you should consult them on the budget. It is no use us tying up our minute staff by having them spend months making business cases if the money is simply allocated to us with no regard taken of those cases.

I want to make a further point about proportionality. I am sorry, but I am totally dissatisfied with the answer. In the case of the North/South Language Body, there has been no request for information from us since we started in 1999 that would inform the Department of Finance and Personnel of where the benefits went on both sides of the border. Therefore there cannot have been a discussion about proportionality because no information has been provided about what percentage of the good that we do is in the North and what percentage is in the South. Why are we the only implementation body not to be given an opportunity to have its proportionality from the two governments changed?

There is something extremely bad about the way that we have been handled. Just to make the issue slightly political: when we consider that this is being done at the hands of the Irish Government, it really makes the case for unionism. When we see our culture, our heritage and our language dismissed as being of no account by people who know nothing about it and will not even come along and ask us, we are in a very serious situation. I will pursue this with a certain amount of energy, and not just today—I have shown on other things that I can do that. I shall pursue this issue because I am not satisfied with the way we are being treated.

We are prepared to sacrifice ourselves and do our jobs by taking part in these cross-border bodies. I do not want to take part in a cross-border body, but if I

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am prepared to do that for political reasons, then I want to be treated with respect, to be treated as an equal and like everyone else. I do not want the Irish setting our budget, with our department simply rowing in behind it, and cutting into what we do.

I now have to go to the community that I represent, who we organised well last year in terms of the marching season. I now have to return to that community and say to them, "Boys, we do not have the money this year to do what we did with you last year and which resulted in a quiet marching season. The reason we do not have the money for you is because Dublin has cut our budget". The community will think that I have gone haywire. That is a very dangerous political situation. It is one that I have flagged up time after time, although no one seems to pay any attention. But Ministers and civil servants will come squealing to me when there is trouble next summer during the marching season. They will throw money at every possible way of reducing the troubles.

We have a solution. We are putting things in place to beat paramilitarism in the outlying areas of Belfast. We have ways of persuading people to understand that they can show respect for their communities not by throwing stones, but by taking part in cultural events. It is all going down the Swanee because our budget is set by Dublin. I am really quite distraught.

4.15 p.m.

Baroness Amos: I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Laird, is not convinced by the points I have put. I hope that I made it absolutely clear that all budgets for North/South bodies are agreed jointly by the governments of the North and the South. I cannot put it any more clearly than that.

I turn to the particular question of Waterways Ireland. Again, I thought that I made it absolutely clear, first, that this funding has not been signed off. However, it was important to make budgetary provision for it. In that context, it should be recognised that there are essential functions which need to be delivered regardless of the political situation. That is why it was important to make some form of budgetary provision, despite the fact that the expenditure has not been agreed. Again, as I said, it is not for developing new policies, it is for headquarters building.

Secondly, I turn to the issue of consultation. I shall have to look at it again. I have been assured and it is my firm understanding that significant consultation has been undertaken between the relevant department, the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, and the agency. The noble Lord tells me that there has been no consultation. Clearly, there is some misunderstanding on both sides as regards the nature of what has happened. Perhaps I may write to the noble Lord setting out exactly the process that has been gone through in respect of the agency. If he is still unhappy, I shall be glad to hold a meeting.

Proportionality, as I said, is based on an assessment of the perceived benefits to each jurisdiction of the work of the body. The proportionality issue rolls

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forward unchanged, unless a case is made to amend it. Again, I would be happy to engage with the noble Lord on that matter.

The noble Lord referred to areas that the agency would like to address but cannot do so because of the nature of the budget. The amount reflects the 2003 budget plus an inflation uplift. The department is confident that the 2004 budget will be sufficient to allow the bodies to implement a substantial programme of work. I know that that means in practice that the agency will need to prioritise. However, all public sector bodies need to do that, They must prioritise and make decisions about the areas of activity that they feel to be more important than others. As I said, I shall be happy to hold a meeting with the noble Lord and the relevant Minister to go through the two issues—in particular that of consultation—which have been raised.

Lord Laird: I do not want to prolong the proceedings, but I should like to know from what source information has been given to Her Majesty's Government so that they can set a satisfactory budget for the cross-border language implementation body. How can anyone decide that, when no one has discussed it with us? How can anyone have a concept of what we are trying to do?

I understand that we shall have a discussion about the whole area of consultation, but—take my word for it—there has been no consultation. I want to know dates and times. Who was the consultation carried out with, and what topics were covered? There has been no consultation. Indeed, when I wrote to the Minister about it, that was not refuted. Over a period of six months, there was no consultation.

The body that I represent is a new one, unlike the others, which existed before. We have been recruiting staff and starting from the bottom. It is not a question of simply giving us an inflationary increase each year: we are building up an organisation. We have come from nowhere. The other organisations are made up of bodies that have been amalgamated. Why are the same rules applied to us? There should be different rules for us because we are building from the ground up. Again, it comes down to consultation. We have had no consultation with the department that is supposed to sponsor us. It does not look after us in any way, and that in itself tells a story. We should not be treated like organisations that are simply brought in and require their money to be upped by the rate of inflation.

We want to employ staff. When we open our new offices, something we are required to do under the agreement, it will dramatically put up our overheads. Why are we given only an inflation increase? Moreover, we were told to go out and start up groups. We had four groups in 2000; by 2003, we had 246. That needs more than just adding a wee bit on in line with inflation. I am seriously concerned about the political consequences of what is going to happen.

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