An updated Infrastructure Strategy for Northern Ireland (ISNI3) has been drafted and approved by ministerial special advisers. However, until the Programme for Government is released it is unclear which infrastructure projects will get the green light.

ISNI2 was released in 2008 and outlined infrastructure spending from 2008 to 2018. ISNI3 is required because of the economic downturn and budget cuts and will cover infrastructure spending over the 2011 to 2015 budget period.

The departmental spending plans are a good indication of where funds will be directed.

Following the UK Government’s spending review the draft Budget allocated £5.21 billion to capital spending. This was increased by £167.4 million to £5.38 billion in the final version. This is less than half of ISNI2’s indicative spend of £13.4 billion for 2011 to 2018.

Each department began with a zero baseline and was given sufficient funding to cover their existing contractual commitments. Future allocations will be determined on an individual project basis.

Public and private sector organisations have called for the Executive to quickly publish a Programme for Government and ISNI3.

Education

Already, the impact of the austere Budget is showing. Education Minister John O’Dowd has stated that plans for new school builds “which may prove not to be viable or possible” will no longer be processed by his department. In addition, all new build projects in planning have been suspended at their current stage until a financial assessment is made. However, the ambitious £100 million Lisanelly shared educational campus is to go ahead, according to O’Dowd.

Health

Five of the 10 key milestones identified in ISNI2 were completed on schedule: the Downpatrick enhanced hospital; Castlereagh, Grove and Portadown health and care centres; and the Ulster Hospital redevelopment phase. The Enniskillen- based South West Acute Hospital is under construction, while the Andersonstown and Shankill health centres are due to open this year.

Delays have been experienced on the Gransha mental health crisis centre, which was due to be completed last year, and the Omagh enhanced hospital.

The Omagh enhanced hospital and the Altnagelvin radiotherapy unit are further priorities.

Transport

Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy has said that £800 million of the £1.2 billion allocated for capital spend from 2011-2015 is allocated to the A5 and the A8. Therefore, “a range of competing priorities would have to be considered for the £60 million of additional funding received for major road projects in year four [2014-2015] of the Budget period.”

Decisions on which schemes will begin in 2014-2015 will be dependent on the funding made available beyond the current Budget period and “that will not become clear until further work has been completed to develop the third edition of the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland, which is due to conclude this year.”

A spokeswoman from the Department for Regional Development said that £20 million will be made available to ensure that the £75 million Derry to Coleraine line can begin construction in 2014.

Justice

The Department for Justice’s capital allocation over 2011-2015 is £276.6 million. This will include £30 million for the new training college and £27 million for prison refurbishment, to be provided by the Executive.

Forensic Science Northern Ireland is currently housed at Carrickfergus police station since its Belfast premises were destroyed by a Provisional IRA bomb in 1992. It will be provided with a new facility.

Culture and sport

Three regional sport stadia (Casement Park, Ravenhill Stadium and Windsor Park) will receive £110 million for refurbishment. Four new mobile libraries will be provided. Local political pressure makes it hard to close branch libraries.

The Ilex Regeneration project will experience “a landmark year” in 2012- 2013, according to the Budget. It will receive £37.6 million from OFMDFM and DSD for capital works.

Sourced from departments
* £400 million to come from the Irish Government

‘The Cost-Effective Delivery of Essential Infrastructure’ was published in June by a taskforce of engineers from across Ireland, organised by the Irish Academy of Engineering. It follows on from the report on infrastructure for an island population of 8 million (estimated for 2030), published by the academy and Engineers Ireland in 2030.

Despite the “extreme pressures” on public finances (north and south), “sustained investment” in critical infrastructure is needed to allow for essential economic growth.

To reduce costs, the authors recommend action in four main areas:

• more efficient management of non- construction costs;

• the removal of specific barriers to development e.g. the cost of land, planning and procurement;

• improving training, skills and the availability of private finance; and

• synergy between North and South.

In 2010, the UK Institution of Civil Engineers gave Northern Ireland’s overall infrastructure a C grading i.e. requiring attention and “at a crossroads”. Transport was marked as “adequate for now” although secondary roads (experiencing a “chronic deterioration”) and public transport needed more investment.

There were no regional agreements on land prices for infrastructure, which are normally set in protracted negotiations with landowners. Disturbance and severance settlement can account for around 50 per cent of those costs.

The Executive’s seven centres of procurement excellence were regarded as “intelligent clients” as they can call on in- house expertise. Relying on external consultants and accountants would be a “retrograde step”.

Legal challenges by contractors lead to extra costs, so the centres need to be more thorough when preparing tender documents. The industry is encouraged to co-operate with clients rather than going to court.

The reputation and functioning of PFI projects needs to improve, to gain public confidence, and the tendering costs are “very significant”. Procurement bodies therefore needed to streamline the procedures involved.

Northern Ireland planners are urged to monitor the performance of the English Major Infrastructure Planning Unit, which may prove to be more efficient. Rigorous streamlining, with minimal time spent on process, was needed in the province’s new two-tier system.

An end to the “stop/start programming” of infrastructure would allow construction firms to develop more expertise in training and apprenticeships.

The report calls for public funding to be complemented with the equivalent amount of private funding, using a “suitable combination” of borrowing, equity interest, part-privatisation and mutualisation.

Cross-border synergies should involve evaluating whole-life costs, “proper economic prioritising of projects,” increased private sector involvement and improved competitiveness.

Nationally accredited procurement centres of excellence were also needed in the Republic.

The academy suggests a ‘single permitting authority’ for the Republic, charged with co-ordinating the main consents. Furthermore, a ‘national infrastructure authority’ would merge the work of the National Roads Authority, the Railway Procurement Agency and the large-scale procurement function of Irish Water.

A joint infrastructure advisory board, to co-ordinate cross-border planning, is suggested; its members would be drawn from the Strategic Investment Board and national investment authority.

An island infrastructure bank should also be investigated. A template has already been set down by the Nordic Investment Bank (established in 1976) which serves eight countries in Scandinavia and the Baltic.

Closing the infrastructure deficit will require “continued heavy investment” in public infrastructure (on both sides of the border) for the next 20 years.

Supporters of the Lisanelly shared educational campus see it as a ‘swords to ploughshares’ project and a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity for Omagh.

The rationale for the £100 million scheme is based on the need to replace or substantially renovate schools in the town, its relatively good community relations, and the availability of the former military base.

That area has been vacant since 2007 and was gifted to the Executive through last year’s Hillsborough Castle Agreement. The total site is 139 acres: 118 at Lisanelly itself and 21 at the adjacent St Lucia site.

Up to six schools could be located on the site, retaining their ethos and each having its own core building. However, pupils will increasingly be educated in shared classes as they move through the key stages of the curriculum.

In particular, there would be four shared

facilities, which standalone schools could not create on their own:

• a school of performance (music and drama);

• a school of making (art and design);

• a school of activity (sport); and

• an ecology field centre.

The project would also be a major step forward for shared education in the Omagh area. Integrated education is limited in the Western area. Just eight out of 246 schools from the formal integrated sector although some maintained and controlled schools also have shared enrolments.

Significantly, it has the backing of Protestant and Catholic churches. Its working group is jointly chaired by Rev Robert Herron (Trinity Presbyterian Church) and Monsignor Joseph Donnelly (Drumragh parish). Both men minister in the town and Rev Herron also chairs the Western Education and Library Board.

Five schools are prepared to move to the new site:

• Arvalee Special School;

• Omagh Academy;

• Omagh CBS Grammar School;

• Omagh High School; and

• Sacred Heart College.

Phase one is likely to include Arvalee, Omagh High and Sacred Heart.

Another school, Loreto Grammar, was to be relocated to Lisanelly but is currently in a legal dispute with the Department of Education. Loreto was pledged £14.6 million for new buildings by direct rule Education Minister Barry Gardiner in April 2010. The school anticipated a new build by 2010, which would have been delivered through a public-private partnership.

When the Lisanelly site became available, the Department of Education instead concentrated on bringing schools together in the shared campus. The building plans of eight schools, including Loreto, were rejected for not complying with departmental policy.

The High Court found in favour of Loreto on 25 March this year, when Mr Justice McCloskey described the conduct of Caitríona Ruane and her department as an “abuse of power”. The governors’ expectations, in his view, were not properly considered.

An appeal was subsequently lodged by the Department of Education and was being heard in the Court of Appeal at the time of going to press.

Caitríona Ruane strongly backed the project and John O’Dowd is also supportive. O’Dowd has described it as “a template for shared education that could potentially be implemented in many other areas.”

Overall, the capital budget for schools has been cut from £927.4 million over 2008-2011 to £489.2 million over 2011-2015. Lisanelly is the largest project in the system and the Minister plans to keep it at the top of the list.

The steering group first met in April 2009 and an exemplar design team led by Bovis Lend Lease was appointed in March 2010.

A planning application is due to be submitted in November with a decision on outline planning permission expected by summer 2012. A subsequent reserved matters application would be submitted in mid-2012.

Each building will take 12-18 months to construct. The first construction phase is expected to start in January 2013 with the first schools hoping to be on site by September 2015.

Belfast’s original streets are disappearing and will soon be gone for good unless urgent action is taken, according to Mark Hackett. “I think we have very little time to save what is unique about Belfast’s spaces,” the architect states.

Most of the old Victorian terraces and mill buildings have been knocked down, taking with them much of the city’s character. Some of the best remaining examples can be found in the Village and the New Lodge.

Hackett is a Co-Director of the Forum for Alternative Belfast, a non-profit “think tank and do tank” aiming for “a connected and a better designed city”.

As well as being more sensitive to the past, he wants to see more strategic thinking about how today’s streets are used. This follows on from the ‘Happy to live here?’ exhibition on urban design organised by him and fellow architect Declan Hill in 2006.

“What was realised was that it wasn’t so much the housing, as the spaces in between housing, that was the biggest problem,” he comments. Car parking bays, for example, take up the space which could be used for a front garden.

No one organisation is in charge. The Roads Service, for example, maintains the street surface, its signs and lights, while the city council handles building standards and street names. A multiplicity of organisations “means it’s very difficult to pull together those forces to make good space.”

Decision-makers are also disconnected from local communities due to the Troubles and the legacy of direct rule. Hackett therefore sees a “renewed sense of local politics” as an important factor, with the people who make the decisions about an area actually coming from the area.

“What we need to talk about is care or pride in our area” whether than means the street or the city.

However, he claims that Belfast is not a single entity but three or four cities, with each one “not aware of the other”. The city centre “has become almost a utility for shopping, for business, but nobody lives there”.

The solution, in his view, does not involve re-inventing the wheel but just adapting best practice from other places and implementing that with strong leadership. The English Partnerships quality standards, for example, were copied in Dublin’s regeneration.

At street level, strict enforcement of waste regulations would also improve appearances e.g. making sure that bins do not take up space at the front of houses. The new Social Development Minister will be asked by the forum to take a walk around two recent housing schemes, to point out examples of poor design.

While the city was once “completely walkable”, it has been given over to the car. Road-building from the 1960s onwards encircled the city centre with large open spaces. Hackett characterises Belfast city centre as a ‘grey doughnut’ encircled by those spaces, which could be put to good use with some creative thinking.

Take the Divis Street bridge over the Westlink, for example. The forum’s ‘Divis Pathfinder’ project visualises the street as an arterial route that can raise the value of surrounding buildings and encourage people to walk into the city centre. Shops could be built on the bridge itself.

Publicly-owned land could be released in a controlled way, thus making it a zero- cost improvement. This project is being assisted by the Strategic Investment Board and the Roads Service.

In addition, the forum’s ‘Inter-Change’ project considers how the Roads Service can complete the flyover at York Street originally planned in the 1960s. Traffic currently spills over into the nearby streets. The forum thinks that these streets could be used by more pedestrians and cyclists, with gardens, trees, shops and housing, again increasing the land value. A four-week exhibition on the project, using work by architecture post-grads, was held at the nearby Golden Thread Gallery during May.

Northern Ireland’s first energy model will be published shortly, following on from research by a team led by Richard Tol, a research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. Tol, who also works at Trinity College Dublin and Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit, outlined the main identified trends to an agendaNi seminar on energy infrastructure in March. The research was funded by the Strategic Investment Board.

Final energy use data for 2006 indicate that Northern Ireland’s total usage in 2006 was nearly 5Mtoe, of which nearly half was domestic. The second largest bloc (approximately 2Mtoe) was for transport, storage and communication, but principally transport. The next two (electricity, gas and water supply, and agriculture) were much smaller in comparison, less than 0.5Mtoe.

Energy use is therefore strongly defined by where people live and how they travel.

Not surprisingly, transport, storage and communication was by far the most energy-intense sector. Energy intensity approaches 1.2kg of oil equivalent per pound sterling, followed at a distance by agriculture and forestry (just under 0.4kg). The least intense sectors are financial intermediation, wholesale and retail trade, real estate, renting and business activities.

Northern Ireland has a fairly unique energy mix (see chart) with high shares for fuel oil, diesel and coal. This reflects the province’s limited public transport network, large public sector and economically inactive population and the shortage of heavy industry.

Estimates for carbon dioxide emissions by sector are already available at UK and Republic of Ireland levels. The three highest emitting sectors in each country were:

• electricity, gas and water supply (first in both countries);

• transport, storage and communication (second in the UK);

• domestic (second in the Republic).

In both cases, electricity, gas and water supply mostly covered refining. No specific data are available for Northern Ireland.

Background factors included in the model included Northern Ireland’s economic growth rate (predicted by Oxford Economics), world oil prices from the International Energy Agency and demographic patterns.

Northern Ireland is currently a net exporter in power generation but, on the baseline scenario, will become a net importer after the second North/South interconnector is built. Progress towards 40 per cent renewables by 2020 would see the province returning to export status after 2020.

Coal will cease to be used for power generation by 2014, according to the baseline, but the 40 per cent scenario foresees that continuing well into the future for co-firing biomass.

Cutting carbon

A gas pipeline to the west would bring about a small reduction in carbon emissions; this assumes a 30 per cent uptake in the households that will be reached.

Insulating buildings would bring greater benefits. Without intervention, the percentage of ‘below standard’ houses will fall from 26 per cent in 2006 to 20 per cent in 2025 i.e. down to 12,412 thousand tonnes of CO2. However, increasing heat efficiency by 30 per cent could achieve 12,364 thousand tonnes by 2020 and 12,226 by 2025.

One scenario looks at the potential impact of 10 per cent of commuters changing to walking, cycling or taking the bus. However, this would only decrease the 2025 figure for carbon emissions from 12,412 to 12,396 thousand tonnes. The normal commute in Northern Ireland is short (8-9 miles) and commuting only accounts for 20 per cent of the total population’s travel, as so many people are not working.

The model copies the same structure used in the ESRI’s energy model for the Republic, developed over the past five years.

“It’s essentially an econometric simulation model so we project energy use by sector based on economic forecasts of how the sectors will develop,” he told agendaNi afterwards. “And then the energy use in those sectors depends on the structure of the economy, how fast the economy grows, which sectors grow fast [and] the price of energy obviously.”

Its main purpose is to compare different scenarios, which will make it particularly relevant to policy-makers. The key questions will be what they can do to change the assumptions used in the baseline and what effect that will have on energy use: “So it’s essentially an exploratory tool for energy use [and] for carbon dioxide emissions.”

However, reducing emissions further will be a hard task as Northern Ireland’s two dominant sources for emissions (i.e. transport and households) are also the most difficult to change.

In drawing up the model, Tol did the best he could with the data he could find, but the shortage of information was disappointing. “There’s big black holes in data availability,” he comments. “Some data simply aren’t there. Some data, while they are there, are not accessible.”

That problem was caused by a “very secretive” public sector working in “silos, and not talking to each other and not communicating” and also a “certain amount of neglect” from the UK Government. Northern Ireland is “not something that is high on the list of priorities for the people who collect the official statistics for what they call the UK, but in effect is Great Britain.”

Northern Ireland’s Fuel Mix (5)

While it is generally accepted that interconnectors allow more renewable energy (mostly from wind generation) to be connected to the electricity networks; John Constable argues that local wind power management strategies are also needed.

“Nobody should fool themselves into thinking that interconnection is a solution,” he tells agendaNi. “It’s a neutral channel through which one market reaches out to another to obtain a solution at a cost.”

Constable, who is the director of policy and research at the UK charity, suggests that “in order to strengthen trading positions, you should have the capacity to offer solutions to that wind management problem.”

While “the people on the other end of the connector may be your friends” they will still “drive a really hard bargain.” Therefore, trading partners should be able to deal with their own problems so they are not exposed to extreme market disadvantage.

Interconnection is also susceptible to political and economic events in participating countries, Constable continues. He cites the Sweden-East Denmark interconnector as an example. On 7 December 2010, there was very severely reduced interconnector availability in East Denmark because the interconnector was being replaced but Swedish customers were protected because of a Swedish congestion policy. The EU has since asked Sweden to review that policy. “Unless there is synchronisation of congestion policy throughout these areas, market disadvantage may arise for some participants,” Constable warns.

“You need to be able to deal with the problems on your own grid area, both for technical and economic reasons. You don’t want to be reliant on your partners. If you go into the market with surplus wind energy, or because you need to buy energy on the interconnector you don’t want to be over a barrel,” he reiterates.

Targets to reduce the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent and increase its energy consumption from renewable sources to 20 per cent by 2020 are “politically driven [and] over-ambitious.”

“They are technically unrealistic because the pace required is too quick. They are economically unrealistic because we have no idea if we are going to be rich enough to afford it and yet they are paradoxically legally binding,” Constable states.

“Because you’ve got targets, you are not looking at organic growth but over-rapid, artificial growth,” he contends.

He believes that organic growth would lead to new innovation and inventions but because of the target, “you will simply grab hold of the nearest available technology which will get you there.” This will lead to “suppressed development.”

The idea of creating European-wide electricity interconnection, as proposed in the EU’s Roadmap 2050 policy, is unrealistic, according to Constable.

“Such a grid would be under-utilised and very expensive,” he remarks. “If its principle purpose is to flush surplus wind energy from one side of Europe to another, you are talking about low-load factor plant which has very high peak outputs but relatively low forms of energy.”

He adds that wind patterns are unpredictable therefore “it’s very optimistic to think that low wind in Germany is going to be neatly balanced by high winds in the British Isles.”

“I’m frankly tired of listening to these dreamy presentations on pathways to 2050. You imagine someone in 1911 looking forward to the 1950s and you think what lies between those two dates: two world wars, the Depression. It’s just too far away,” Constable adds.

Fossil fuel prices will have to rise very sharply before renewable technologies will look attractive, he believes.

“These are hard times and they are likely to be difficult for quite a few years. Consumer tolerance is not going to be at an all-time high so I think some tact is necessary.”

He concludes that industry should tell politicians: “We understand the general direction you are travelling in but the pace is difficult to sustain without exposing the consumer and the general economy to significant costs and uncertainty.”

Video conferencing and up-to-date technology “has to be the future” for teaching, says St Pius X principal Mary White.

The college, which has 908 pupils and 65 teaching staff, was commended for its “infectious enthusiasm” by judges who presented it with the Becta ICT Excellence Award 2010.

Following a refurbishment in 2000, the school has honed in on the opportunity to develop modern IT facilities, including computer suites and a video conferencing room.

A forward-thinking principal, White says ICT should be an integral part of all teaching and learning. Her staff run lunch and after-school computer clubs, as well as encouraging pupils to forge links with local businesses. Parents have also become more involved with the college by logging onto the website and through programmes such as Truancy Call, where they are notified by SMS if their child doesn’t turn up for class.

The college is part of the Magherafelt Learning Partnership (MLP), which comprises four other post-primary schools in the area, the Northern Regional College and a local special school. White believes that ICT initiatives are continually providing new opportunities to work more efficiently.

“Through the MLP, the two main areas we will be focusing on are video conferencing and home school access. Video conferencing will help to cut down on travel so it should save time and money.

“Instead of sending two students from St Mary’s in Magherafelt to learn A-level chemistry, we would have a video link between the two schools so our students could stay at the school and study without having to travel.”

The school has used video conferencing to link up with pupils at Ciraggo Middle School in Texas and could also be used if a child is off school sick. “It has to be the way of the future,” highlights White.

While all pupils are skilled ICT users, she noticed that many parents and grandparents were lacking in computer skills and has organised a series of inter- generational evening classes.

“The parents who don’t know how to use computers come in along with students. We tried grannies and students and we tried parents and students, and the two groups were working together. It has definitely helped them to understand ICT better,” she explains.

Being crowned winners of the award has helped raise the reputation of the school: “Children still want to come to the school and we’re still meeting our intake,” comments White. “It is recognition of the work that we are doing within the school, of all the teachers and pupils and that was the main thing.”

It has also been a good way to re-think how the college works: “Applying for the award and going through the self-review framework was a very good self- evaluation of what we are doing in ICT. It’s very difficult to always keep to the floor in ICT so the process makes you look at yourself, where you are and where you want to go.”

The ICT initiatives have also helped to boost grades. Last year, 99 per cent of GCSE students taking CCEA exams were awarded A*-C grades. However, achieving academic success was not the school’s only goal. White’s aim was to use ICT to ensure “real value-added is provided to improve teaching and raise standards”.

“It’s the relationships within the school that the parents comment on. That’s why they send their children to our school, because they know that they will achieve there,” she comments.

E-learning co-ordinator Gerard Duffy develops the school website and online initiatives. He says that allowing pupils to choose their own style of learning with ICT and the “careful embedding of technology” in the curriculum means each student receives a “highly personalised experience”.

Duffy believes that staff training is a major part of the school’s success with ICT: “Regular inset training on the latest technologies ensure teaching and non- teaching staff are equipped with the high- level ICT skills to support 21st century learners.”

However, by increasing the use of ICT applications in school, staff have had to come up with a stringent e-safety policy. White says the policy, which is updated annually, is “essential” for a secure and safe learning environment and to avoid problems.

She comments: “It is a contract for all staff and students and it is promoted through the school’s website, homework diaries, information evenings and class lessons.”

Government data from across the UK public sector are to be available in one place later this year, if a public data corporation gets the go ahead. The organisation was to be launched in April but ministers and officials are still discussing its purpose.

Intellectual property and data protection are reserved matters, with Westminster setting policy for the whole UK.

The March Budget states that the UK Government is “considering the merits of machinery of government changes to facilitate the development of a Public Data Corporation (PDC) through a sponsoring department.”

If approval is granted, a shadow board will be set up and the Government will create an inventory of datasets from key organisations. The Cabinet Office will draw up a policy on data access and licensing by the autumn, which suggests that September is the earliest possible launch date.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude is enthusiastic.

“We have entered a new era of transparency in government and have already made an unprecedented level of data available,” he said in January. “But we want to go further and faster. This agenda is more important than ever.”

Government’s role, in his view, was to help people maximise the benefits of new technology. Citizens can use data to develop internet applications, plan ahead in their businesses, and identify ways to run public services more efficiently.

However, as agendaNi reported in February, data release does have financial risks. The Met Office and Companies House are ‘trading funds’ and therefore take their income from sales. Back in 2009, the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain opposed plans to release its data for free. The Government therefore agreed to subsidise the organisation in return for the release. The same problem would arise if the Land and Property Services Agency’s data were released.

Trading fund revenues total over £250 million. Less revenue could affect the quality of research which, in turn, could mean a lower quality product. This carries real dangers in mapping and weather forecasting.

Maude acknowledged that many state agencies “face a conflict between maximising revenues from the sale of data and making the data freely available to be exploited for social and economic gain.” He claimed that the corporation “will enable the conflicts at the least to be managed consistently with a view to opening up access, and at best to be eliminated.”

The Shareholder Executive, which represents UK Government-owned businesses, is working with the Cabinet Office on the plans and is likely to ask for restricted access to commercially sensitive data. Security is another obvious factor to consider.

It is not yet clear how much Northern Ireland data will be made available but the principle is already established.

www.data.gov.uk (launched under Labour in January 2010) includes 1,277 data sets referring to the province.

A total of 135 apps can be downloaded from the site. One example is airTEXT, which sends a free text message, voicemail or email to Londoners when air pollution rises. This is designed to help residents suffering from asthma, emphysema, bronchitis, heart disease or angina.

“The technology is often there but there’s no access to the services,” explains Learning and Teaching Scotland’s (LTS) Andrew Brown.

He argues that while schools throughout the country have had webcams and other IT equipment for years, many couldn’t actually use it until 2007. “Although the computer in the classroom might have the equipment, they didn’t have the service that they could use with it to connect with someone else. Or if they did, it wasn’t the same services as the other person had in another school in another part of the country,” comments Brown.

Glow is the world’s first national intranet for education and was developed exclusively for Scotland’s educational system by LTS. Its suite of online tools allows teachers, pupils and parents, to work together.

The initiative was launched in 2007 and by using the national directory, Glow users can find others with similar interests or expertise and to discuss ideas, projects and even teaching plans.

A teacher himself, Brown decided that he would take up the challenge of helping steer its development at a national level with LTS.

While there is a lot of emphasis put on government funding for ICT in schools, he says that people can get the “best for free online now” and if the Scottish Government is paying for something, it should be justified.

“It’s not all about the technology, it’s about the teaching,” he adds. “Invariably, good teachers realise when they can make use of different opportunities for the benefit of their students. It’s all about the relationship between the educator and the learner. It’s not just about teaching a content pack. For a lot of people, that’s maybe a concept that’s quite hard to get over.”

One example of how Glow has been used in practice, Brown highlights, is where a teacher set his pupils an assignment and said he would be online that evening to answer any questions that they had. “When he logged on at 7pm there were loads of questions already but there were also answers because some of the students had already answered each other’s questions.”

Improvements

He acknowledges that while Glow has many benefits, improvements could still be made: “The main benefit has been releasing opportunity for pupil learning and staff development. For a lot of schools in Scotland there was a patchwork of ICT. Some had access to some programmes and others didn’t have access to any. This was seen as almost a leveller.

“I thought there were great things happening in other classrooms that didn’t really seem to be part of Glow but we’ve changed that over time because now there are aspects of Glow that the world can see. It’s not just someone with a username and password.”

Some improvements have already been made to the system. When Glow first launched, it was a static page and users were directed to lots of different sites but now when a person logs on they can determine what buttons to use and what sections to visit.

However, Brown would like to make more use of open standards so that systems “could talk to each other” and, instead of being limited to using programmes from just one manufacturer, products from several sources could be used together.

“It would make things easier for us in the future, whether it is for using computers in the classroom or for using mobile devices. They need to be able to talk to each other and be able to display things properly and use all these different screens. The only way you can do that is through open standards,” he remarks.

According to Brown, one of the most successful parts of the programme has been web conferencing. In practice, teachers in remote, rural settings have used this to let children talk about different life experiences. “You couldn’t do that in a better way to try and get children to understand life experiences and a different environment. The web conference has been quite a good tool. A lot of people seem to have sized this as a good opportunity for them.”

Glow in numbers

All 32 local authorities have signed up

784,089 accounts created so far

34% of account holders use the service each month

8,000 blogs created since August 2010

Established under the Good Friday Agreement, the North/South Ministerial Council (NSMC) is the “lead institution” in developing North/South co-operation and bringing together Ministers from Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Since the Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, the NSMC has held 11 plenary meetings, which are led by the First and deputy First Ministers and the Taoiseach. Plenary sessions take an overview of co-operation on the island and look at the work of the six North/South implementation bodies:

• the Food Safety Promotion Board;

• the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission (including the Lough’s Agency)

• the Language Body (Foras na Gaeilge and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch);

• the Special European Union Programmes Body;

• InterTradeIreland; and

• Waterways Ireland.

Five institutional meetings have also been held. At these, the Executive is represented by the First and deputy First Minister and the Irish Government is represented by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Institutional meetings look at EU- related issues and any problems with the operations of the NSMC.

Sectoral meetings are held more regularly to oversee North/South co-operation in the 12 agreed sectors. The 12 sectors are the six implementation bodies (above) and six areas of co-operation: agriculture, education, environment, health, tourism and transport. There have been 142 sectoral meetings between 1998 and 2011, including 77 since 2007.

The Good Friday Agreement states: “The North South Ministerial Council and the Northern Ireland Assembly are mutually inter-dependent, and one cannot successfully function without the other.” Therefore, when the Assembly was dissolved between 2002 and 2007, the NSMC also ceased to operate.

The council is supported by a joint secretariat, staffed by members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the Irish Civil Service. In January 2011, the secretariat’s new Armagh office was opened by Brian Cowen. Prior to that, the northern meetings were held in hotels or colleges. The Dublin meetings are generally held in Farmleigh House (the former home of the Guinness family, now owned by the Government). The meetings rotate between jurisdictions and costs are met by the host jurisdiction. Joint Secretariat staff are paid for by their respective government.

A review of the North/South implementation bodies and the areas for co-operation began in 2007 and reports are due at the June 2011 plenary meeting, after several delays.

The review has been examining the value for money of the implementation bodies, the case for additional bodies and areas of co-operation within the NSMC where mutual benefit would be derived, and a suitable substitute for the proposed ‘lights agency’ which had been intended to look after lighthouses.

During an exchange in the Assembly on 6 December 2010, Tom Elliott asked Martin McGuinness, whether the existing implementation bodies are part of the review, and, whether the terms of reference of the review would allow for some of those bodies to be closed.

The deputy First Minister insisted that “when commitments to agreements are made, whether it is the Good Friday Agreement, the St Andrews Agreement or the Hillsborough Castle Agreement, those agreements have to be implemented.”

When further pressed by Jonathan Bell, who asked if McGuinness agreed that the implementation bodies are of limited value given the Republic’s economic problems, he said he did not agree and referred to InterTradeIreland as an example of “a roaring success.”

McGuinness defended the implementation bodies, adding: “Whenever I hear people talking about the cost of those institutions, I hear the insinuation that a case should be put forward for their abolition because those people are opposed to them in principle. That is a huge mistake, and that approach is very short-sighted. We must recognise, as Ian Paisley correctly said in the aftermath of the first North/South Ministerial Council meeting, that we have to bring down all the old barriers and all the old obstacles and remove all of the old hatreds.”

The creation of a North/South parliamentary forum and a North/South consultative forum were encouraged in the 2007 St Andrews Agreement. Neither have made much progress due to opposition from most unionists and a general lack of enthusiasm.

However Dawn Purvis has called for a forum to be implemented because “the only way to secure the union is to have good relationships with our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland.” It would be “a recognition of partition and of this devolved institution.”

On 8 October 2010, a conference on the creation of a parliamentary forum was held in Newcastle. Working groups from both jurisdictions are now looking at the possibility of a further conference and an inaugural meeting of the forum.

Progress on the North/South consultative forum, which would be appointed by the two administrations and represent civil society, has been even slower. Micheál Martin sounded exasperated as he told the Dáil on 27 May 2010 that since 2007, the matter has been discussed at every plenary NSMC meeting but nothing can be done because the Executive had said that the consultative forum could not be established until after a review of the Civic Forum for Northern Ireland. That review started in June 2007 and the forum is expected to be abolished.

Meanwhile, the Irish Government consulted with its social partners and cross-border and North/South groups on the establishment of the consultative forum in 2008. In October 2009 and May 2010, it held consultative conferences involving the social partners and civil society groups from across the island. Martin said the Government would: “press strongly to have the matter brought to an early conclusion.”

Progress

The main progress since devolution has been the opening of the Newry by-pass in July 2010 and the continued work on the A5 (Aughnacloy to Derry) and A8 (Belfast to Larne) routes. The January 2011 joint communiqué cited the development of a new satellite radiotherapy unit at Altnagelvin (where approximately one-third of patients would be from County Donegal) as progress. However, this project has now been stalled.

The mutual recognition of driving disqualifications became operational in January 2010. However, despite discussions about having the same drink- drive limit in both jurisdictions, the Republic’s is still lower at 50 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood as opposed to the UK’s 80mg.

Between January 2009 and 2010, Peace III funding had been approved for 126 projects worth €207 million and Interreg IVA funding had been approved for 49 projects worth €153 million. In addition, InterTradeIreland is focusing on gaining as much funding as possible through the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, which rewards innovation initiatives, particularly between business and academic institutions.

Approximately 200,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste in Fermanagh and Tyrone was repatriated to the Republic last year, however the NSMC’s communiqué does not refer to the €36 million cost to the Irish tax-payer.

In terms of animal health, a 2010-2011 action plan for all-island animal health and welfare strategy is in place. A new website, www.borderpeople.info, has been launched with information on working and living in the border counties.

A child protection hub – an internet resource showing research, policy, serious case reviews, court judgements, news articles and other material relevant to child protection published in Northern Ireland, the Republic and Great Britain – is now available to health and social care staff in both jurisdictions.

The opening of the Middletown Centre for Autism as an all-island centre of excellence for children with autistic spectrum disorders was hailed as a success by the NSMC as it had supported