The DUP has made a guardedly positive response to proposals from Minister for Finance Brian Cowen for a strengthening of North-South economic co-operation on a wide range of issues.
Mr Cowen, who met senior loyalist representatives yesterday evening, said earlier in Templepatrick, Co Antrim, that such co-operation was imperative so the €100 billion that will be spent on infrastructural development in the Republic and Northern Ireland over 10 years is well spent.
In the evening the Minister visited the loyalist Taughmonagh estate in south Belfast where he met loyalist representatives, including UDA "brigadier" for south Belfast Jackie McDonald. He urged greater EU financial support for the peace process and also called on loyalists to follow the example of the IRA. "Of course we would encourage loyalist paramilitaries to do the same. Our own Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has indicated that he understands we have got to give time and space to those organisations now to consider what they should do. Obviously we would like to see everybody decommission their weapons," he said.
In Templepatrick Mr Cowen told an economic conference that he was not working to any "surreptitious" united Ireland agenda in urging greater collaboration between the two jurisdictions on issues such as energy, infrastructure, tourism, job creation and planning.
"We don't have to worry any more about people taking suspicious or surreptitious agendas as if that's the motivation for co-operation. Co-operation makes sense on its own basis, and we have that settled constitutional framework. We are moving on, we have all found an accommodation, we are all trying to make it work," he said.
"All-island co-operation is an imperative for the benefit of everyone. The more we do together by consent and by agreement to our mutual benefit the more we'll all gain," Mr Cowen said before addressing the 10th annual Northern Ireland economic conference.
"I am here to pursue an objective, rational economic agenda: more jobs for people in Donegal and Derry, more jobs for people in Fermanagh and Monaghan, more jobs for people in Louth and Armagh, and obviously throughout the island of Ireland we can do an awful lot more together than we can do separately. It's patently obvious that is the case," he said.
His comments were quite positively received by DUP chairman and Assembly member Maurice Morrow, who also attended the conference. "We have made it quite clear that where there can be co-operation we will not be opposed to that. But it will be co-operation which will be of mutual benefit to both Northern Ireland and to the Irish Republic. We have never opposed that.
"But we are going to make it quite clear that we will work within the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland and we expect the southern Government to do likewise. They have to realise that if they keep their aggressiveness that has been prevalent down the years, then they are going to make it difficult to take this forward," he said.
