Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will travel to Belfast on Monday and announce details of a new €1 billion peace fund, provided by the EU, the UK and the Irish Government.
Mr Varadkar is expected to be present with European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic and the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris and is likely to discuss the implementation of the Windsor Framework and the prospects for the re-establishment of the Stormont institutions, officials said.
The Taoiseach is also expected to meet Northern Ireland businesses during the visit.
The new programme, Peaceplus, will have a fund of €1.14 billion. It is designed “to support peace and prosperity across Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland”.
Omagh bombing inquiry: ‘The bomb affected how I felt about where I came from, driving me away from Northern Ireland’
Man (70s) shot five times after masked men break into Coleraine home
Architecture of the Belfast Agreement is dying of disinterest
IT consultancy Auxilion to invest €10m as it plots UK expansion
Previous EU programmes, the Peace and Interreg programmes, have funded 23,000 projects since being established after the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
The Peaceplus programme will fund projects “across six key themes designed to ensure the continued economic, social and environmental development of Northern Ireland and the six border counties,” a briefing note from the Department of the Taoiseach says.
The programmes are managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), a North-South implementation body established under the Belfast Agreement. The SEUPB is headquartered in Belfast, with smaller offices in Omagh and Monaghan, and is jointly sponsored by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in Ireland and the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland, the briefing notes says.
[ Taoiseach says he believes there will be a united Ireland in his lifetimeOpens in new window ]
Separately, the Taoiseach will host the Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic for a visit to Dublin on Tuesday.
