This day 28 years ago Albert Reynolds and John Major signed the Downing Street Declaration. That agreement was central to the successful negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to our country. Every community on this island continues to benefit from that agreement. Following on from the Downing Street Declaration, the first peace-funded programme, PEACE I, was established in 1995. PEACE I and successive programmes have enabled much-needed economic, social, educational and community developments, especially in less-advantaged areas in Northern Ireland and the Border region. The Minister will recall my ongoing representations regarding the need to put in place as soon as possible the PEACE PLUS programme. I appreciate the Minister’s role in having the draft programme finalised with committed funding of more than €1.1 billion. We need this inclusive and ambitious programme up and operational as soon as possible to ensure the continuation of very valuable cross-Border projects led by our local authorities, other statutory agencies and community groups. Will the Minister give me an assurance that there will be no delay in having the programme finally up and running?

I thank Deputy Smith for raising this issue and for his ongoing representations in support of the development of the PEACE PLUS programme. My Department has responsibility, on the part of the Irish Government, for the roll-out of this programme, working with the Northern Executive and, of course, the UK Government and the special EU programmes body. We have a very exciting programme at a value of €1.145 billion that has been approved by the Irish Government. The next step is for the draft programme to be submitted to the European Commission for its consideration and final approval, and I expect a formal launch will likely take place in the spring of 2022. The funding will start to flow under the various programmes under PEACE PLUS over the course of 2022. I thank the Deputy again for his support.