British Irish Council, Guernsey, 18/19 November 2004

Andrew Davies and I attended the 6th British Irish Council Meeting in Guernsey earlier this month.  All 8 member administrations were represented at the meeting at a senior level, with the UK represented by the Deputy Prime Minister because the Prime Minister was meeting President Chirac in London.

The main agenda item was a discussion of a paper on Tourism, but the meeting began with an oral report from the Taioseach, Bertie Ahern, on the current position on the Northern Ireland Peace Process.  Mr Ahern noted that  it had been a year of peace that since the Council last met, and this was an achievement in itself.  He also noted that the British and Irish Governments were working extremely closely together in trying to secure a lasting settlement for Northern Ireland, and paid tribute to the work that Paul Murphy, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had been undertaking in this process.  Responding on behalf of the British Government,  the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, confirmed that the two Governments had been working together extremely effectively and that relations between Britain and Ireland were now as warm and close as they had ever been.  It was obvious that the coming days and weeks would be of crucial significance in making progress on a long term settlement.  The Chairman of the Council for the day, Chief Minister Laurie Morgan of Guernsey, commented that it would be very satisfactory for all concerned if at the next meeting of the Council, Northern Ireland were to be represented by members of a restored devolved administration.

The discussion on the paper produced on Tourism was interesting and informative.  All the administrations emphasised the considerable importance to their respective economies that the tourism industry now represented, but it was accepted that statistics and a proper information base for the development of the industry were frequently inadequate.  For that reason,  the Sectoral Working Group on Tourism had proposed that a more systematic method of defining and accounting for tourism in economic analysis would be of benefit to every administration.  It was agreed that the Group should continue to do further work on Tourism Satellite Accounts.  (A Tourism Satellite Account is a set of data tables based on analysis of data on both expenditure by tourists, and on business sectors which serve tourists.  A TSA provides a much enhanced set of statistics which are more accurate than by taking the results of individual surveys alone. A TSA also opens up possibilities for modelling and analysis).  Several of the delegations referred in complimentary terms to the work being done by the Welsh Economy Research Unit in collaboration with the University of Limerick on Tourism Satellite Accounts, and all the administrations agreed that this represented an important piece of work which could help to inform policy on tourism in the future.  The Group was encouraged to develop it further and to report back to a future Summit.

The Council also endorsed the work that the Sectoral Group has been doing on staff training, recruitment and retention.  The tourism industry has particular problems with respect to staff training, because although there are some larger employers, many of the businesses within the industry are small scale and find it difficult to release staff for training.  This has resulted in many establishments failing to achieve satisfactory service levels with a corresponding lack of competitiveness for small to medium enterprises.  It is intended to implement a pilot project into staff training, recruitment and retention in Guernsey, with a view to the lessons learnt being of an advantage to all the BIC administrations.  Again the work will be reported to a future Summit meeting.

The Council also reviewed the progress being made by each of the other sectoral working groups, and each administration reported on the progress  which is being made.  It is clear that all the administrations gain benefit from the work of these sectoral groups, and it is certainly the case that the Assembly Government’s participation in these groups both benefits our own policy development process and contributes to other administrations’ consideration of issues in social policy.  

The final Communiqué issued after the meeting is attached to this Statement.  The next Council meeting will be in 2005 in the Isle of Man.