The British-Irish Council (BIC), held its 10th summit meeting on 14 February at the Royal hospital Kilmainham, in Dublin, Ireland. It is customary for each summit to focus on a single theme. The focus of this summit was on misuse of drugs, which is a workstream led by the Irish Government. The next summit meeting will be held in Edinburgh in September 2008.
The UK leads the Environment Workstream and the last ministerial meeting was held in Northern Ireland on 1 February 2008. At that meeting, it was agreed that BIC should continue to intensify co-operation and exchange of information between the members on a number of important environmental areas including unavoidable climate change, understanding extreme weather events, integrated coastal zone management and managing radioactive waste. The next ministerial meeting of the BIC Environment will take place in Jersey in 2009.