Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement debate -
Thursday, 13 Jul 2023

Finance and Economics: Discussion

An Cathaoirleach

Apologies have been received from Mickey Brady MP, Colum Eastwood MP and Clare Hanna MP.

On behalf of the committee, I very much welcome Professor John Doyle, vice president for research at Dublin City University, DCU; Mr. Gareth Hetherington, director of the economic policy centre at Ulster University; and Professor John FitzGerald, adjunct professor at the department of economics in Trinity College Dublin, to discuss finance and economics.

Before we begin, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. However, witnesses and participants who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts does and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter.

Witnesses are also asked to note that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings should be given and that they should respect directions given by the Chair and the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should neither criticise nor make charges against any persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the person's or the entity's good name.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I assure our guests that this is not the Committee of Public Accounts as they well know. We are all very friendly and are not competing with each other for space in the media. We are competing for knowledge and practical suggestions. I call Professor Doyle to make his opening statement.

Professor John Doyle

I am very grateful for the opportunity to present today on research conducted in DCU and also along with Professor FitzGerald as part of the analysing and researching Ireland, North and South, ARINS, project, a joint initiative of the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame. I welcome the focus on the economy and North-South co-operation in that regard. Recent research I have been involved in, including surveys and large-scale focus groups, has confirmed that the public has a strong desire for more information and a more structured dialogue on North-South co-operation and possible constitutional change. Digging deeper into that, they are most interested in the economy and public services. Those are their concerns about the future and possible constitutional change.

In my opening statement, I will make three brief points on the all-island economy. The debate has been dominated by discussion of the so-called UK subvention to Northern Ireland. It is an important issue but it is not the only issue and in my view not the biggest issue. The part of the subvention which would remain in a united Ireland is not the same as the one published by the UK accounting offices; that is for a different purpose. Professor FitzGerald and I might disagree on the final size that would be left, but nobody who has looked at it thinks it is the amount that is published. There are other more important issues to discuss.

The most important aspect is the absence of any economic dividend in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. In some ways it is the reverse. Productivity is a key driver of any economy, with wage levels and living standards resting upon it. The two parts of the island had very similar levels of productivity in 1998. Gross value added per worker per hour is a standard measure and it was very similar. Now, 25 years later, the South is 40% more productive per hour worked. A huge gap has opened up mainly because of declining productivity in Northern Ireland and marginal increases in productivity in the South over that time. Rather than there being an economic dividend, most of that dividend has been in the South and there has been a real sluggishness about the economy in the North, which fundamentally is what causes the public sector problems in the North and the underlying low standards of living.

If the economy in Northern Ireland reflected that of the Cork-Kerry region, there would be unlikely to be any deficit in public finances in Northern Ireland. There would be a better standard of living and the possibility of improved public services. That is the challenge. It is not an unimaginable way to move. We are not picking somewhere on the planet that seems so different from us. We are asking why the Belfast region or Northern Ireland as a whole is not able to deliver the level of wages and economic conditions that we are able to produce for the counties of Cork and Kerry as a sub-region. If that was achievable, either in the short term or in the context of a united Ireland, in some ways that would completely change the economic dividend.

The most stable figure for the UK subvention to Northern Ireland usually used in the media is the pre-Covid figure of £10 billion. That is an accounting exercise but the UK states it. It is a perfectly valid one. It would be very similar to what the Central Statistics Office, CSO, would do here. However, it takes figures that would not move in the context of a united Ireland and it extrapolates them out per capita. For example, Northern Ireland's share of the defence budget includes the cost of the UK's Trident nuclear missile system. Therefore, Northern Ireland 's defence budget is £1.2 billion per year. The South's defence budget recently passed €1 billion for the first time. We know we have things to do in the South in improving our defence expenditure, but we are unlikely to more than double expenditure overnight or to introduce a nuclear weapons programme. Therefore, there are things that simply will not move, debt and pensions being the big ones and I will come back to those issues later if there is interest in them.

The Northern Ireland economy has very low unemployment. It is very similar to us in that it has been low for a number of years. However, it is largely a low-wage economy which is at the heart of the underlying problem with low taxation yields there, as well as poor standards of living compared with the South. Approximately 25% of the population are in receipt of state benefits because their wages are so low. As its jobseeker's allowance, for example, is £75 a week, it is not that state benefits are overly generous in driving that behaviour; it is the underlying weakness of the economy itself.

Two areas are being explored in the joint project with Mr. Hetherington's colleague in Ulster University's economic policy centre, which is trying to unpick why foreign direct investment and tourism have been so poor in the aftermath of the agreement. This is picking two important sectors of the economy which have not really grown. Foreign direct investment, FDI, performance in Northern Ireland is about 20% of the level that it is in the South pro rata allowing for population and there are real challenges there.

Colleagues in the ESRI did some work at the tail end of last year looking at some of the issues that drive productivity, trying to unpick why we have this big North-South gap. If we look at the South's investment in education infrastructure, a 1% improvement in the graduate skills of our population leads to a 1% improvement in productivity. It is a pretty straightforward equation. It shows that better investment in infrastructure and education leads directly to better wages. The method of how it happens is complex, but that is what happens. In Northern Ireland that was not happening. The education system certainly needs improvement. About 18% of young people leave school with a GCSE, equivalent of a junior certificate qualification, at most or even without a GCSE. That figure is only 7% in the Republic. Therefore, there is a big gap in performance. Further education is a significant benefit to the economy in the South and is almost non-existent as a sector in Northern Ireland. Those are things that would impact on foreign direct investment, but political stability is a key issue there. Moving from an era of conflict to an era where power sharing was unstable and then to an era of Brexit, there has never been a period where companies were willing to make a long-term investment, which has been a significant challenge.

Finally, I would like to flip the argument. It is very hard for any of us to predict what would happen even with the best economic models we have, but the question is why the Belfast region, which including areas like Lisburn and Newtownards has a population of about 750,000, would not be capable of attracting the scale of inward investment we have been capable of attracting to Cork and Kerry, not to speak of the Dublin region. It would also benefit the Republic of Ireland in the sense that Dublin is congested. During the week, the head of the IDA said it is now very difficult to attract new investment because companies ask where their employees will find housing. Transport is also an issue. Dublin is overconcentrated. Cork is considerably smaller and Galway, Waterford and Sligo are smaller again. Typically, in a European model, we would expect the second city to be about half the size of the capital city, making it attractive to companies of scale. The Belfast region is of that scale more or less.

The other cities in Ireland are not of that scale at this time, which means we lose out. There is a reason we end up with a very concentrated economic model around Dublin.

I have outlined the issues. The evidence of what the public thinks is that nobody expects a referendum on a united Ireland to happen this year or next, but people think it is too late when the referendum is called to have these sorts of discussions, when we are into the heat of campaigning and individuals can claim whatever they want to claim. People want to hear the arguments well before that, in a quieter atmosphere, when they have time to think about them and there can be a more structured discussion than has happened to date. I very much welcome this meeting.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Professor Doyle for his very enlightening contribution. He put some challenging questions to which we must find solutions. I now invite Mr. Hetherington, who is joining us online, to make an opening statement.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to provide evidence to the committee this afternoon. I thank members for facilitating my contribution via Microsoft Teams. It is very much appreciated. As the Cathaoirleach outlined, I am director of the Ulster University economic policy centre, which is an independent economic research centre based in Belfast. We conduct a wide range of research across several workstreams, one of which is focused on the Northern Ireland labour market. I will restrict my opening comments to providing the committee with a brief overview of the current position in that respect.

Overall, the local Northern Ireland labour market continues to hold up reasonably well despite the wider economic headwinds. We are now back to pre-Covid levels of employment. However, below that headline, a number of significant changes and new trends have emerged. The first is in respect of payrolled employees, the number of whom continues to grow strongly. It quickly returned to its pre-pandemic peak of 750,000 and is now on its pre-pandemic trendline. The number currently sits at 790,000, which is at or near all-time highs. In addition, the growth in employees in Northern Ireland relative to March 2020, just before the pandemic hit, is among the highest across all UK regions. It is not often that Northern Ireland tops UK regional economic league tables but it does in this case.

In contrast, the self-employed numbers are still significantly below their pre-pandemic levels, falling from approximately 135,000 before the pandemic to just over 100,000 now. That contraction in self-employment is one of the largest contractions across all UK regions. There are reasons for this trend across the UK but it is not clear why it is so exaggerated in Northern Ireland. The first factor in the general trend is, as generally recognised, that the UK furlough scheme was much more effective at protecting employees than were the supports given to the self-employed. In addition, there were changes to the tax rules before the pandemic in the UK that were targeted at and impacted the self-employed, particularly those with no staff, who chose self-employment specifically for tax purposes. This would certainly have been a strong factor in transitioning people from self-employed status into employed status.

There are also significant differences in performance across sectors in the local economy. Job numbers in most parts of the private sector are still below pre-pandemic levels or are only marginally higher than in late 2019. The big outlier is professional services, which have grown very strongly, and the public sector, especially in health and education. In contrast, sectors such as retail and construction remain well below their pre-Covid levels.

The final labour market issue I want to talk about is one of the biggest challenges businesses continue to face, namely, filling vacancies. Vacancies reached record levels as the economy recovered from lockdown. With rising interest rates over the past year, those vacancy numbers have come down but they remain at elevated levels compared with historic averages. Why are businesses struggling to find staff? First, there is the demographic challenge. Between 1980 and 2010, our working age population grew by approximately 270,000, or 90,000 per decade. However, it grew by only 15,000 between 2010 and 2020 and growth is forecast to plateau this decade before going into decline after 2030. This raises big policy issues, particularly in terms of re-engaging our economically inactive group, with a focus on skills programmes to encourage people back into the labour market. It also puts an even greater emphasis on the need to ensure all young people leave the education system with the skills both they and the economy need.

The second big policy area is in respect of immigration. There are some interesting findings in this regard from the latest national insurance number, NINo, registrations for Northern Ireland. From 2010 to 2020, Northern Ireland typically had 6,000 to 8,000 NINo registrations per annum from EU nationals, excluding Ireland. In 2022-23, that fell to just 1,000. NINo registrations from Ireland have historically been consistent at 1,000 per annum. In the past two years, the number has doubled, although it is still very low at 2,000. The big increase in registrations is from Asia, at almost 7,000, in addition to non-EU Europe and the rest of the world. In 2022-23, NINo registrations totalled 14,000, which is the highest level since 2007-08.

There may be a general view that Brexit has caused a reduction in immigration. That is incorrect but it has contributed to a change in immigration patterns, with a collapse in the numbers from the continental EU, who are typically lower skilled, but big increases from the rest of the world, typically made up of more highly skilled workers. That is consistent with bigger growth in sectors such as professional services and across the health service, where higher level skills are required, but it has created greater challenges in sectors that would previously have relied on easy access to European migrants.

I again thank the Cathaoirleach and members. I will conclude my opening comments at this point. I am happy to take questions from members in due course.

Professor John FitzGerald

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it. Like Professor Doyle, I will talk about the economy as a whole rather than getting sucked into too much discussion on the subvention.

We are agreed that Northern Ireland's structural economic problem is low productivity, making it dependent on the goodwill of central government in London to maintain a reasonable standard of living. This involves a major transfer of resources to Northern Ireland from central government. It will continue to necessitate such a transfer from outside unless and until the productivity gap is substantially closed. Northern Ireland needs to recognise its economic weaknesses and solve them. The Northern Ireland Fiscal Commission has shown that the North's economic future is in its own hands to a significant extent. However, to date, the very hard choices needed to deal with its structural problems have been ducked. If the structural problems of Northern Ireland were immediately addressed in a successful manner, it would make possible a long-term successful future for the North's regional economy, either within the UK or in a united Ireland.

Why is productivity so low? The most important factor is the low human capital of the workforce. There is a series of important studies on this issue. One, from 2015, is by Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster, who is one of Northern Ireland's top economists, and Colin Knox. Another recent study is by Emer Smyth and colleagues at the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. I published a paper on the topic in 2019. All this research shows that the human capital problem is really big. Northern Ireland continues to have an exceptionally high share of early school leavers who are destined for very low productivity and low-paid employment, if they find employment. While a high proportion of Northern Ireland's children progress to third-level education, many choose to work outside Northern Ireland. This is a social and political choice much more than an economic one, as shown by a recent study by Pivotal. In the past, migration was an economic issue in the Republic.

Addressing the early school leaver problem would take decades before the full benefits mature. That is a reason for starting immediately to tackle the problem. However, a quicker win would be to transform the society into one in which Northern Ireland's children who are graduates choose to return and make their lives there. That is the obstacle to be overcome. I am publishing an article tomorrow in The Irish Times on the Intel experience. The big constraint on Intel's moving here in 1990 was that there were not enough engineers anywhere in Ireland. The company was convinced by IDA Ireland that if it located here, enough Irish engineers would come back from abroad to work for it, which they did. That approach can work.

The second major factor in the poor productivity performance is the low level of investment, especially in infrastructure.

As regards solutions, Northern Ireland needs to develop an inclusive educational system. The current system particularly excludes children from a disadvantaged background. The North needs to move immediately to a mixed ability intake into second level, abolishing the grammar-secondary division. The benefits of such a reform would take decades to mature, but that is why it is urgent to start now.

Northern Ireland must change to become a society where its graduates choose to live instead of preferring to live in Great Britain. A return of graduates would make a huge difference in terms of productivity. The case of Intel is just one example of how that works. Resources need to be shifted from current expenditure to capital expenditure to improve infrastructure, but of course that is going to be very painful. Northern Ireland should exploit the advantages of simultaneously being part of the UK economy and of the Single Market for goods.

There are two possible outcomes. One, Northern Ireland remains indefinitely part of the United Kingdom. The weakness of the UK economy means the resources for goods and services for poor regions are severely stretched. Long-term success for Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom depends on growing a successful regional economy that can largely stand on its own feet. It would give significant insulation against possible policy failures within the wider UK. An example of a reasonably successful regional economy within the UK is of course Scotland, and London is of course the powerhouse.

The alternative is for Northern Ireland to be eventually in a united Ireland. Unification would need substantial prior convergence of living standards between North and South, with Northern Ireland dealing with its domestic problems successfully and raising productivity. A Northern Ireland that had to rely on charity within a united Ireland would be very painful financially for the existing Republic of Ireland. This would be likely to result in major tensions in terms of access to resources in subsequent years.

What next for Northern Ireland? It goes without saying that it needs to get the show back on the road with the Executive and to quickly make the really hard economic choices to raise its level of productivity. If Northern Ireland starts immediately to reform its economy, in about 20 years it could hope to have closed a substantial part of the gap in living standards between Northern Ireland, the rest of the United Kingdom and Ireland. That would leave it with the choice of being either a successful regional economy within the UK or an economy that could join in a united Ireland without major economic disruption of the island.

I have also given members an appendix, which I actually gave to this committee before, on the subvention. I disagree with Professor Doyle, but if he wants to go into that, we can fight it out and have a shoot-out here.

An Cathaoirleach

Thank you very much. Important questions have been addressed there. Regarding the post-Brexit, situation, is there any sign of new investment in the North as a result of the access to Europe and to the UK?

Professor John Doyle

Not yet, and it is a little early, I would say, to make a judgement that it will not happen. It was really only a matter of months before we knew what was happening. Even still, the Horizon research and innovation deal is not done. There is still uncertainty as to whether it will be. Even if people were minded to make a long-term investment in Northern Ireland, they are probably biding their time at the moment. I think it is too early to say.

An Cathaoirleach

I accept that. The point though is that there is a huge opportunity. If that were driven by the political parties there, it would make a huge difference, would it not? It could be transformational because what you seem to be saying, if it is a fair comment, is that the Good Friday Agreement has not brought the benefits we expected to the North but this clearly should.

Professor John FitzGerald

The opportunity for investment is there, but the investment will need the skilled labour to come back from Britain to staff it. It would be interesting to ask some of those Northern Ireland graduates who are in Great Britain why they do not come back. The Pivotal study did that and economic issues are not the problem.

An Cathaoirleach

It is social and political. It is the lack of a working Executive administration.

Professor John FitzGerald

That does not help. There was a story in the last week that the UK and the EU have not reached agreement on cars going from the UK to the EU. If the batteries come from outside of UK, from China, and are fitted in the cars, then the cars will be subject to tariffs. If, however, the battery were fitted to the car in Northern Ireland, it would be a UK car and they would not be subject to the tariffs. There are these loopholes, but investors require certainty. We were at an ARINS session yesterday and people were talking about the uncertainty for business. The absence of an Executive does not help. In selling Ireland abroad, we need the Executive to turn up and say that Northern Ireland is a great place and it works.

An Cathaoirleach

Yes, it needs to say that we are working together and we can give people the opportunity to invest.

Deputy Brendan Smith

I welcome our witnesses who provide very valuable material for the work of the committee. On Professor Doyle's introductory remarks about the poor performance of Northern Ireland with regard to foreign direct investment, some of us have advocated that IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland should be merged with Invest Northern Ireland and the other agencies there. If foreign direct investment comes to Northern Ireland, it is good for our State. We are in an all-Ireland economy now. Is there merit in trying to have more cross-Border bodies? I know we are in a political situation now where neither the Executive, the Assembly nor the North-South Ministerial Council are functioning, unfortunately. In the situation of the institutions back up and running that it is hoped we will have in the autumn, should we be pursuing the idea of having an industry development and enterprise policy based on all-Ireland enterprise agencies? I mentioned this idea in the past and it was shot down by the members of the unionist community in particular. However, having done trade missions in the past in government, we always had Northern Ireland-based companies with us. It was always beneficial from our point of view and from their point of view. It is disappointing to see how low the level of foreign direct investment is. I accept the point regarding graduates, but we can learn from the Intel experience and what the IDA achieved in that respect.

Regarding further education, I recall very well that Northern Ireland had a much more advanced and structured further education sector before we developed one. Ours has been developed since, I believe, the early 1990s, and today, thankfully, we have a whole network of further education colleges throughout the country, which leads to progression to third level. It is disappointing to hear about the situation in Northern Ireland. The message from the three witnesses was that lack of education attainment is a huge barrier to Northern Ireland progressing. All the witnesses are working in learning and teaching environments. From their research and from their colleagues, are there particular initiatives that are needed at primary and second level to try to ensure children and young people are not leaving school without a much better level of educational attainment?

Professor John Doyle

I will take the questions in reverse order. I can answer the last question very quickly. It is almost a consensus in academic research, and it is rare that you get consensus, that the key barrier in Northern Ireland to better completion of school and thereby creating a pipeline of young people going on to further education is to abolish the 11-plus examination that divides children at the age of ten into either the grammar school system or the secondary school system. Every piece of contemporary research over the past decade says this is a disaster socially. Can the members imagine their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews having to sit the leaving certificate at ten years of age? That is what we put kids through. We make them do their leaving certificate at ten years of age. Someone put it that way at the seminar yesterday. We know your life chances are, therefore, while not set in stone because kids can wriggle through, statistically are set in stone. Statistically, a child's chances of coming back from not getting into a grammar school at age 11 are small. Those are overwhelmingly the kids who leave school at 15 or 16 years of age. They do not get A-levels and therefore they do not go on to further education. That is the biggest gap. The graduate numbers are similar North and South. They have a problem with the graduates from Northern Ireland in that a third or more of them are working in England. They are there, but it is about finishing secondary school and further education. On the 11-plus, if you were to do one thing in the morning that would make the difference, it would be to end the 11-plus examination. Politically, it has not proven possible. There was an attempt back in the late Martin McGuinness's time where they abolished the legal examination of the 11-plus, but grammar schools colluded effectively to create two private systems because there was not the political will to ban private versions of the examination, and so they continue in all but name. As well as the social consequences of it, it is a huge economic problem as well.

I agree that it would help if there were a merger of IDA Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland. Invest Northern Ireland has a difficult product to sell. It is not that the staff working for Invest Northern Ireland are poorly qualified or bad at their jobs. If we took the best of our IDA Ireland staff and stuck them in the Invest Northern Ireland offices in Belfast or North America, with nothing else changing, they would struggle to get a different performance. The merger would help, therefore, but, unfortunately, I do not see any political willingness in this regard. It is not just on the part of the unionist parties but also that of the British Government. They have set their face firmly against considering this question at all. Such a merger would be a good idea. If there were to be any political capacity to advance it, that would make a difference. I am just not sure it is possible now.

Nobody disagrees that the education system needs to be significantly improved in Northern Ireland. I refer to companies. There is a slight Intel effect that would be quicker than a 20-year change for sure. It is the capacity to persuade companies to make the investment that is the issue. This is the work we are doing with Mr. Hetherington's colleagues in the EPC. I refer to getting beyond the statistical analysis. We have good data now on things like the educational infrastructure. The question now is why the ESRI model did not predict any improvement, even if we fixed the education system. I am not saying do not fix it, because we absolutely need to. The worrying aspect, however, is that we would expend all the money and still not get the result we want. It is early days and I would not want this to be the final word on the matter.

Increasingly, we are hearing from the people we are interviewing on an off-the-record basis in companies and from investors themselves that even if the graduates were there, if they do not know what the political situation is going to be in 12 months' time, why would they set up in Fermanagh rather than Monaghan. It is known that Monaghan is going to be in the Single Market next year and the year after. There is also going to be a supply of graduates. Equally, it is known that if there is a need to get a Minister on board to do a final deal in San Diego or Boston, that prospect will be available to me. None of those things, unfortunately, is available to the people of Fermanagh. It will not be possible to get a London Minister on board a delegation. A company located in that county will not be in the Single Market for services, which is the biggest growth area in the economy. There is also uncertainty about what the arrangements in this regard are going to be.

The issue is the degree of political stability, although not in the sense of which party is in power. I do not think anybody in San Diego loses any sleep over whether Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael holds the position of Taoiseach. I also suspect they would not lose any sleep if Deputy Conway-Walsh's party leader were to be in the office. There has been much media coverage of this. There is a big difference, however, between whether it is civil servants making a decision, who are afraid to make any decision because they do not have any political authority to do so, even if they have legal authority, versus a Minister in London or the power-sharing Executive. These are very different decision-makers from the perspective of chief executives in North America. They might get very different outcomes.

Even if we were to fix the things we can measure, it is the unmeasurable aspect when it comes to the decision-makers that will, ultimately, bring 1,000 jobs to Derry or not. If it is not possible for these chief executives to see the right people and if they are not sure whether their facility will be in the Single Market or not, then there are plenty of other places in the world to bring those thousand jobs to. Why take a chance on Northern Ireland? This is the context of the early stages of the work we are doing with Ulster University now. This is not the final word and we have plenty more people to talk to, but we are surprised at how consensual this view is. The OECD deal has taken tax out of the equation as a competitive issue to some extent. It is graduate numbers, infrastructure and certainty that everybody is talking about.

An Cathaoirleach

We will extend the meeting by five minutes. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Senator Niall Blaney

I welcome the witnesses. It has been an interesting debate. The longer the presentation went on, the more I was sitting back here and the clearer it became that to make this constitutional change happen is a much bigger task than any of us realise. This will particularly be the case if matters are not resolved regarding the political baggage in Northern Ireland. It is a pretty much impossible situation. We sometimes feel we are sitting here in an asylum talking to ourselves. That said, the work being done by the witnesses is vitally important. It is important that these issues are spelt out in clear terms to people in Northern Ireland. I refer to the state of its economy.

I say this because I do not think it is generally realised. I have sat with unionist politicians and spoken to them about their education system. This was in the context of a general conversation about education and how things stood in this regard. I told them that I believe, as a republican politician, that we have more to offer unionists than anybody else. I firmly believe that. The response was that we do not have any universities in the top 100 in the world. I was making the point that there is no reason for unionist families to send their kids off to the UK for an education and, by extension, a life. The varied Irish model is a good one.

There is much more for people in Northern Ireland than just the UK. We need to be looking more at the all-Ireland economy. Regarding the comment made to me that none of our universities was ranked in the top 100, I answered that this might be the case but that our graduates are getting better outcomes. They may be coming out with lesser degrees but their outcomes and pay packets are in excess of those kids coming out of the top universities in the UK. We need models to show what a Northern Ireland economy could be like if we were to come together on this island to make it all work. It would be very useful all around to be able to create more models to show what can be done for the next generations and what we can achieve and attain.

An Cathaoirleach

I would like to bring in Mr. Hetherington as well.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I thank the Cathaoirleach. There were quite a few comments. I have not disagreed with anything anyone said, so that is encouraging to start off with. Regarding FDI, there may be a benchmark issue here. The Republic of Ireland's FDI experience has been greatly successful relative to pretty much everywhere else in the world. When we compare Northern Ireland's FDI experience, then, we are comparing it with a very high benchmark. Relative to many regions in the UK, Northern Ireland performs quite well from an FDI perspective. I agree with much of what was said in respect of there being a valid question as to why Northern Ireland is not benefiting more from spillover effects from the South. This is certainly a valid question.

Turning to merging IDA Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland, there is significant merit in having a greater level of co-ordination and co-operation between the two organisations. Within Northern Ireland, though, Invest Northern Ireland receives much criticism from some parties in terms of where FDI tends to locate. It tends to be in the greater Belfast area. The suspicion is that Invest Northern Ireland is only interested in bringing FDI to the east of the province. If we moved to having a single FDI body, there would be similar if not magnified criticism that there was not enough of a great geographic spread in terms of where the projects were being located. Much more co-operation and co-ordination regarding how we can bring more businesses to this island to invest would be good, but there is a need for a greater emphasis, even in the North, around some regional economic development. I refer to spreading and having an equity to the investment coming here.

Moving to the education system, I will say a few words on further education, FE. I used to sit on a board of a FE college, the South Eastern Regional College. I would not be quite so down on the sector as some of what has been said. If I could make one change to the education sector in Northern Ireland, it would be to provide much clearer pathways for young people transitioning in the education system between the ages of 14 and 19.

It is about that transition from post-primary into tertiary education. For the brighter young people, the path is very clear. They do their GCSEs at the age of 16, do their A-levels at 18 and then go to university. That is clear, it is understood and employers understand that process. At the vocational level, however, the pathway is much more complex and more difficult to navigate. It is harder for young people, for their parents and for employers to understand in many respects. That causes significant issues around the decisions young people make for their future careers. As a result, this has meant there is a significant undersupply of what we would call mid-level skills around national vocational qualification levels 3, 4 and 5. This is somewhere between the leaving certificate and a degree. It is those professional trades and those types of qualifications. There is a very significant undersupply in the provision of those skills. This is having a real impact in constraining growth in the Northern Ireland economy.

Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile

Before Professor FitzGerald starts, I will mention a point briefly, which he might include this in his answer. Reference was made to the lack of infrastructure across Northern Ireland. A perfect example of what the witnesses are talking about is around mid-Ulster and Tyrone. A motorway was built on the A4 motorway and east Tyrone and mid-Ulster are flying. West Tyrone, and by extension my own county, are suffering as a result of it. It is a perfect example of what the witnesses are talking about. Infrastructure is a massive issue, particularly west of the Bann.

Professor John FitzGerald

There are a few points there. In Northern Ireland, when talking about the education issue, I would never say "Be like the Republic". I would say "Be like Scotland." Politically it is neutral and Scotland has the lowest early school-leaver problem within the United Kingdom. This is not a Republic versus Northern Ireland issue. It is Northern Ireland and England versus Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. It is just how one frames it.

Mr. Hetherington took up the issue on progression. It is very important. My children went to the local community school. When my eldest daughter left school in the early 1990s only three or four went on to university but by the time the youngest left school, a lot more went on to university. From my eldest daughter's class, I am told that four ended up with PhDs. The institutes of technology in Ireland are important. We from the universities tend to talk about the importance of graduates from universities but the institutes of technology have been hugely important in terms of progression. This is something that was missing in Northern Ireland. Some 50 years ago Northern Ireland universities were much better than those in the Republic but they did not develop an institutes of technology sector in the same way. I worked in Vietnam for more than a decade bringing over delegations to look at what they should learn from Ireland. I have not sent them to universities; I have sent them to the institutes of technology. Progression is important. One of the issues in the book by Vani Borooah and Colin Knox on education in Northern Ireland is that it estimates a 10% Catholic ethos advantage for kids remaining on in school in the secondary school system. They ask whether it is because the schools are better or because the parents have different expectations. Parental expectations are really important. To change that, one needs a system that provides progression in order that older children progress and younger children follow them. It is not a simple solution but there are solutions and it needs to be worked on.

With regard to investment and IDA Ireland, one also needs a political commitment. Deputy Brendan Smith talked about going on delegations and in such a situation, he was important as the political face of it and in talking to people outside. When Ireland turns up selling Ireland, it has a political face and it has IDA Ireland or Enterprise Ireland showing how it can be done. Northern Ireland needs a political face to sell Northern Ireland.

On the point about infrastructure, it has been really frustrating over the past 40 years. I was on the former Northern Ireland Authority for Energy Regulation for four years, from 2002 to 2006. I had to go to Derry on quite a number of occasions. The train took forever. The bus took forever because of the Glenshane Pass. No money was put into that. I am told that it is about to be completed but the Derry-Dublin road is really also an issue for Donegal. I have a son-in-law who needed a visa every time he came to Ireland. He also needed a separate visa when he went to the UK. I could not take my daughter, my son-in-law and my grandchildren to Donegal because he would not go through Northern Ireland. I said "Look, you will not be stopped", but because he had a questionable visa status in the US, he was not prepared to take the risk. There was also the problem of the road. It is really important for Donegal. When one considers Donegal and the economy, higher education in Derry is important to Donegal. The Letterkenny Institute of Technology has been very successful. It is surprising that the institutes of technology have not attracted more students across the Border, that Sligo has not attracted from Enniskillen, and Dundalk from south Down. Until now they have had something that was not available in the North. It is not just about universities. It is actually about the progression from primary school and secondary school, which we have talked about, and the progression at the end of secondary school with students completing their high school education, either with leaving certificates or A-levels, and then the progression. Just because a person has not gone on to university does not mean that he or she will not will end up as a graduate.

An Cathaoirleach

We will extend this discussion to 20 minutes for everybody so we can have a proper debate.

Deputy Frankie Feighan

There is only one Fine Gael member here so-----

An Cathaoirleach

I have a few questions also. I am still a member, I hope. Some people think I am not.

Deputy Frankie Feighan

I thank the Cathaoirleach. The witnesses are very welcome. This is an opportune time to talk about the Northern Ireland economy, in the times of all-island economy, and east-west, and being part of Europe. We have discussed universities. I grew up in Boyle in Roscommon. When I left college, out of 60 perhaps three went to university. One went to Trinity and the rest went to institutes of technology. People worked on the family farm, got a job in the public sector or a job with their father in his business or they emigrated. Things have totally changed, however and I believe they changed with the arrival of Intel and Ireland's move into Europe in 1973 with the UK.

I come from Sligo and what I am seeing in the north west is very exciting. The Atlantic Technological University, which we have spoken about, with Letterkenny, Sligo and Galway-Mayo institutes of technology, among others, is the first time we have had a university north of the Dublin-Galway line. There are pharmacy courses and veterinary courses and so on. It is quite exciting.

Professor FitzGerald spoke about bringing people across the Border. I do not believe we have been very successful in that regard at Trinity College Dublin or in University College Dublin since the late 1960s. Anybody from Northern Ireland who wanted to avail of third level education went to the UK and they did not come home. There are huge challenges there. In the north west, along with Magee campus of Ulster University and the funding, there is a huge challenge.

There are also challenges regarding accessibility. The A5 is great but it takes five hours and maybe there should be flights between Derry Airport and Dublin Airport. Last weekend there were discussions on direct flights between Donegal and Dublin. Where I come from we have that great airport called Ireland West Airport Knock, from where I can travel to the United Kingdom. I will travel to the UK from Knock on Monday for €9.99. I can leave my house at 8 o'clock in the morning and be at a meeting in Westminster at 12 o'clock.

I am always asked if I have a private jet, and I reply that Ryanair will get you there on time for €9.99. I am just saying that these are the accessibilities and we need to look at these things.

I was in London on 23 May where Trade NI was held. It is an alliance of the three of the largest trade organisations, namely, Hospitality Ulster, Manufacturing Northern Ireland and Retail NI and it launched a prosperity dividend report. They are beginning to box outside that area. Tonight, it will be launched in Iveagh House at six o'clock. There is a lot more collaboration that can be done across the island of Ireland.

One issue that was mentioned was education. It is about education, but I want the representatives' views on integrated education in Northern Ireland. What are their views? I think the figure is less than 9%. Is there a role there to increase that figure? I know it can be a difficult issue. I am not saying it is a panacea for all the problems but it is an issue that we are talking about.

One aspect that I always bring up, and I like bringing it up because people get uncomfortable with it, is if we are to have an agreed Ireland. Nobody understands this but five years ago, we were given observer status of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, OIF. That went through without any huge problems and it is like the French Commonwealth. When we talk about the Commonwealth here, we talk about how it has a combined population of 2.4 billion, and has a GDP that I believe is half that of the EU. I do not say we should join the Commonwealth but there can be much more association from the point of view of trade, sport and legal, as a gesture of goodwill. Yet, it is something that we do not even mention. We talk about an agreed Ireland but I always believe that if we can, we should be observers like in the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. There is a great sign over the French Embassy in Merrion Square which states: "France, your closest EU neighbour", and they are and they held the line during Brexit. I am just saying, however, that everyone who talks about an agreed Ireland or a united Ireland is uncomfortable about this. I like making people a little uncomfortable sometimes.

The point was made that Dublin is overly congested and the housing supply was referred to. As Belfast has scale, there is a huge opportunity there. There is also the opportunity for decentralisation around Ireland but you need to have good transport links, which is why we talk about railways. We have good roads but we need rail transport as well.

It is interesting that it was said that a lot of EU nationals are not coming into Northern Ireland but are being replaced by people from across the world, mostly from Asia. Has that impacted in a different way on the ground? Also, addressing the school leaver problem will take a long number of decades. What has been said is that people need to return home but people really only return home when it is socially, economically and politically viable. Thirty years of generations have left. Again, I have seen it in the north west, where people are returning home. In some areas of the pharmaceutical industry, people are now saying that they do not even want to work for four days per week, because they want to go surfing on a Friday at Strandhill. That is what is happening. Something has happened on the west coast where I come from. That kind of energy needs to happen, not just east-west and not just from the UK. It needs to work from North-South too.

I like the idea that was raised about the living standards. There is the fact that the South is 40% more productive. There is also one very damning figure that arose from one of our meetings. If you are born in the Republic of Ireland, rather than Northern Ireland, you will live on average 1.4 years longer. That is a damning statistic. People can argue about GDP and whatever they call it, but you cannot argue with that. It is something that needs to be raised. I thank the representatives and I would like a few views on some difficult subjects.

Professor John FitzGerald

I would not fly from Derry to Dublin; I would just improve the road. I have since gone to Derry from Dublin twice by train in the past year but it does take a long time, whereas going by bus also takes a long time. When I am lecturing at Atlantic Technological University, formerly GMIT, in Galway, I will take the bus because it is the fastest way to get there. It is actually faster than the train.

On the issue of education, there is one thing. When Peter Hain was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, he spoke at the MacGill Summer School in Donegal. He spoke about the issue the Deputy raised of integration of Catholics and Protestants, rather than of secondary and grammar schools. He said there would be very substantial savings in education by amalgamating the schools. It is something we did in the Republic in the 1970s and the early 1980s, although I have forgotten the name of the Fianna Fáil Minister involved. However, there would be substantial savings. However, Vani Borooah and Colin Knox say that, actually, much more important than the Catholic-Protestant divide is to close the secondary-grammar divide and amalgamate them. Instead of having four schools in a town in Northern Ireland, they should have one school. This would save money and provide much better education.

The issue of migration is interesting. There is the homing pigeon effect. In the late 1980s, Gay Byrne used to drive me mad on his programme where he would say to kids that they might as well emigrate because there is no future in this country. It really infuriated me, because even then, we said that there was a future. It turned out that most of them came back. The research that was done by the ESRI shows that people emigrate and they come back, although we control for the fact that they may be more adventurous and whatever. They earn 10% more and they add very substantially to productivity. Therefore, it is the returned emigrants who are important. I do not know how many of the politicians present are returned emigrants but there are quite a number, such as the Ministers, Deputies Coveney and Donohoe-----

Professor John Doyle

And me.

Professor John FitzGerald

I hope Professor Doyle earns 10% more. He is certainly 10% more productive.

It is a matter of being able to attract people back. Ireland was a boring place in the 1950s and 1960s when I grew up. What jizzed it up? Well, part of it was foreigners coming in, and there were also the people who returned back with a different view of the world that they had developed from outside. The transformation of Irish society as a result of EU membership is important.

On the point of living longer, one of the factors is education. I have a paper with a former colleague, Nuša Žnuderl, in 2013, where we looked at the Republic. It is really horrifying that the life expectancy of people who have left school early is dramatically lower. In particular, this is the case for males between the ages of 20 and 40, where there can be violent deaths or non-natural deaths. Part of this is education but part of the reason they left school early may have been because they had other mental health problems etc. It is true that life expectancy is substantially improved if you have a good education. Part of the difference in life expectancy between North and South is the different levels of educational attainment of the population aged over 40.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

Can I comment on a couple of the points that have been made there?

An Cathaoirleach

Go ahead, yes.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

First, there was a question about the impact of the change in migration patterns. There has obviously been an impact there. It is probably good news for the professional services and ICT sectors in terms of the skills that have come in from the new migrants, particularly from Asia. Yet, the sectors that relied particularly on Eastern European migrants, such as hospitality, agrifood and retail to some extent, are finding it much more challenging. The new migration rules have worked very well for some but have created challenges for others.

I have called for the Northern Ireland Executive to ask for a regional migration policy or to have regional migration powers to be devolved. This would take some time but it could be of great benefit, certainly to some sectors in the local economy.

Regarding integrated education, it is important to realise that while they are Protestant or Catholic schools, many schools in Northern Ireland are quite integrated and very significant proportions of pupils from both communities attend - more than many people outside the system would think. Ultimately, parents want their child to go to a good school in the area. If you are from one community and the best school in the area is from another community, you will send your child to that school. There are a lot of examples of where schools in the maintained or controlled sector are more integrated than schools in the official integrated sector. Ultimately, the policy is how you can make schools from one denomination or cultural background as open as possible to people from other community backgrounds.

Students who live in one jurisdiction and study in another were briefly mentioned. The entry requirements constitute a significant barrier to students from the North studying in the South. For people who go to school in Northern Ireland to achieve the points to enter an Irish university, they need to have studied four A levels. Only very high-performing students in Northern Ireland study four A levels so for the vast majority, even considering going to an Irish university is not for them. There is, therefore, a barrier in terms of the entry points attributed to A levels. It is less clear when it comes to the barriers from South to North but that is something that could be considered to encourage greater cross-Border travel from students from the North who would go to Dublin or Galway to study.

Senator Niall Blaney

I apologise for stepping in on Mr. Hetherington's time. He spoke about the level of integration in Northern Ireland. Of the last two reports before this committee, one said the level of integration was 4% while the other said it was 7%. Mr. Hetherington is saying something quite different. Are there any figures to back that up? If not, could we get figures because Mr. Hetherington made a really important point?

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I will certainly try to identify some of the community breakdowns across schools and send them to the committee.

Professor John Doyle

Integrated education is hugely important for social reasons. I suspect it would have limited economic impact in terms of today's agenda whereas I think ending the 11-plus examination and breaking down the grammar secondary system would have a huge economic and social impact on people's chances. It is not unrelated to life expectancy because education is often a proxy for poverty, which we know is a huge driver of life expectancy.

I am engaged by the debate on the Commonwealth one way or another. Interestingly, in the discussions where people of a liberal unionist disposition or Alliance Party voters are asked what would at least make them think about a united Ireland - it might not be their first choice but they could live with it if it came to it - they mentioned the economy, the health service and peace. The other kinds of issues will be on the table if we ever get to that point but they are not what we want to talk about right now. If they get over the hump of the economy and health, they probably think those other issues could be solved. They are not convinced that we have answers to people's problems when it comes to the economy and the health system.

Regarding net migration, the CSO is projecting net inward migration of approximately 450,000 this decade in the southern economy. Most of those people will be working and will be of an age where they are not pensioners or on benefits. Most of them will be contributing to society in relatively decent jobs - paying taxes and contributing to GDP growth. In Northern Ireland, we are looking at flat migration. If we take a ten- or 12-year horizon, there will certainly be minimal growth in Northern Ireland. It is certainly a factor for some sectors. The Scottish Government has been lobbying for control over migration because it has the same issue. It has a very different perspective on migration from that of the London administration but it is getting nowhere because it is too big an issue for the Conservative Party.

The CAO system is the big barrier. Overwhelmingly, kids in the North do three A levels because that is the norm. Students going to Oxford University only need three A levels. Why would someone do four to go to a southern university? People tend not to do four A levels unless they have a very particular reason. When they add up for points, they cannot compete with kids doing six leaving certificate subjects. It would take some negotiation but I suspect the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform would not hear of us treating A levels the same as the leaving certificate. It would not be justifiable on academic grounds and it would mean a huge potential inflow to a university system that is under pressure. Perhaps an exception could be made for people in the school system in Northern Ireland where the numbers would not overwhelm and where there would be a good social reason to do it.

An Cathaoirleach

We could have a quota system.

Professor John Doyle

Something would have to change in the CAO system for that to change.

An Cathaoirleach

A practical issue for me would be something like the shared island unit with the extra finances the State now has being invested in a cross-Border project to create the sort of society Professor FitzGerald is talking about with a significant investor company, be it between Derry and Donegal or Louth and Down. The concept of the Belfast economic corridor is the driver of the shared towns or cities of Drogheda, Dundalk and Newry. There is potential for us in the South to invest in joint projects or job creation opportunities. I do not know how Professor FitzGerald feels about that. Is it pie in the sky?

Professor John FitzGerald

The road to Derry is the road to Donegal so there is a benefit for Ireland. I would be very nervous about us relieving the UK of its responsibilities. While Northern Ireland is part of the UK, it is up to the UK to provide for services in Northern Ireland. For the Republic of Ireland to start using money to provide services would just invite the UK Government to pull back and think "Ah, the Republic will pay for it". There needs to be a very clear benefit to the people of the Republic of Ireland if they are going to spend the money. The road to Donegal is clearly of strategic interest to the Republic of Ireland. Regarding education in the north west, Derry should be the centre of Donegal. You can see that Donegal is disadvantaged within the Republic. The only way of dealing with that is Derry so there is a strategic interest for the people of the Republic-----

An Cathaoirleach

When we met Derry Chamber of Commerce, it made the point to me that IDA Ireland should be investing in a way that would benefit both of those counties. I do not have the percentage of Donegal people who are employed in Derry but the number is significant.

Professor John Doyle

Imagine having a local high-speed train link from the Letterkenny campus of the Atlantic Technological University, ATU, to Derry city, taking in the Magee Campus of Ulster University and allowing students and staff of both universities to move at lunchtime from one class to another. How much of a vibrant connection could that create? Taking up Professor FitzGerald's point, what we do not want to do is simply take up the can for the Conservative Party to let them make more public service cuts with no advantage to anyone at a cost to the taxpayer. Investing strategically in those sorts of links would make sense for the whole island.

Professor John FitzGerald

Another study that Dr. Seán Lyons of the ESRI carried out in 2019 with me and another ESRI colleague looked at commuting across the Border.

There is a Border in commuting. We can understand why people from the Republic do not commute to the North because earnings are much lower in Northern Ireland. However, there is significant commuting into Derry. Derry is part of the north west. The only migration across the Border in 1911, when we were all part of the United Kingdom, was from Donegal women marrying Derry men. Maybe they just commute in to see each other now. For the rest of the Border, particularly from North to South with earnings much higher in the South and the cost of accommodation much lower in the North, you would expect to see that happening but there is a cultural gap. It applies to Catholics but we found that people from Protestant areas are much less likely to commute even though they might earn a lot more in the Republic. There are cultural gaps to interaction. That is less the case in the Donegal-Derry area because it goes back to 1911 or probably long before it but on the rest of the Border there is a border culturally.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I am sharing my time with Mr. Hazzard. I welcome all the witnesses here today. I value their contribution. It has been a most interesting discussion. They will know this discussion is taking place in the context of us following on from the Seanad discussions on our constitutional future. This committee, being about the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, is obviously examining the different factors. We are starting first with the economy, the discussion on which the witnesses are contributing to and I thank them for that. We will go on to health and education, climate change and human rights and all those things, looking at the impact of reunification and what the constitutional future might be around those things. In the absence of the Government doing this, it is a way for this committee collectively to have a structured dialogue around these issues.

I hear what Professor Fitzgerald is saying. When a referendum is called, it will be too late to have the discussion. Then there is a panicked discussion and we could end up in a Brexit situation again where people do not have the knowledge. The question people want to ask is whether they will be better off in the event of constitutional change, whether their family will be better off and if they will be better off in the future. That is what we are trying to answer here.

What really strikes me from listening to the contributions is the economic opportunity cost of partition. You might say looking at the South as a whole that we are okay. In the North there is obviously a deeper discussion to be had about the failures there. As somebody who comes from the west and north-west region, I am looking at a region that is in the bottom 7% of the EU competitiveness index with regard to infrastructure. The situation as it is at present is not working for us either. That is part of why I, coming from the west and north west, want things to change around that. Rather than looking at the two separate things, I want to envisage something new and something different where we have an opportunity.

Something really struck me a couple of weeks ago when we had a session on taxation and welfare. The witnesses at that meeting pointed out that we have never stood back as a State and looked at the kind of structures and systems we want that will underpin our values as an Irish nation. We have not had the opportunity to do that but we now have the opportunity to do it. That is why, collectively, these discussions are important in that sense.

I want to ask a few different things. My first question relates to FDI. That is one of the biggest differences between North and South as we are. Looking at the key drivers there, we have had a fairly good discussion around education being a driver. What other things do we need in terms of FDI? What might FDI look like in the event of reunification or constitutional change? What might the EU input be? How might we then be within the EU as a whole, not just for goods but also for services? What might that mean? What may we expect from the EU in terms of economic interventions? What might it look like with regard to supply chains and procurement opportunities around that? There is potential, as I said, in the north west and the Border region. Would the economic potential of the North, if realised, have spillover economic benefits for the north west and the Border regions?

We touched slightly on ATU and the possibilities there with the Magee campus of Ulster University. Coming from Mayo, we have the Castlebar campus of ATU and there is the possibility of linking that up with Magee. I welcome the recent investment in Magee concentrating on medicine and those opportunities that would deal with our labour force issues. Around the labour force issues, would we not be better off having a pool of labour from a population of 7 million rather than a population of 5 million?

On education and higher education, I welcome that it is now explicitly set out in legislation, under the HEA Bill, that each of the higher education institutions, HEIs, is tasked with improving North-South enrolment. I welcome what Trinity College Dublin has done in recent times in setting a target to double that. I know the figures are low but it has set a target to double its enrolment. Maybe the witnesses could speak to that.

We have a wonderful education system here but we have to be mindful that there is a €307 million gap in funding for higher education. We must not lose sight of that but we also have opportunities with the National Training Fund and the over €1 billion that is there. Is there any reason we could not have an apprenticeship that is partly on the Shankill Road and partly in Castlebar, for instance? What are the blocks stopping us doing that?

I am sorry; I know I am going on a bit. Maybe I will leave it at those questions but I think the witnesses can tell that there is huge excitement around what we can create here together. We have wonderful expertise on this island across all kinds of disciplines. We only have to look at the all-Ireland cancer research. What is being done there is absolutely fabulous. If the witnesses could speak to a couple of those things in terms of our opportunities, that would be great.

Professor John Doyle

The Deputy is right about the north-west region or west-north-west region in the Republic of Ireland. The economic statistics there are not strong. They are radically different from Munster. Partition certainly has some impact on that. It would be almost impossible to say there is not some impact there. Clarifying what that is for the southern side of the Border might be complex. Mr. Hetherington was right when he commented earlier that the comparator of Invest Northern Ireland and the IDA is not fair in some respects. That is why I said earlier that I do not think it is fair to talk about the Invest Northern Ireland staff offering. I am not saying there is not a need for reform on some issues there.

For me, the issue around potential constitutional change is that, at the moment, we might compare Northern Ireland to Sunderland or perhaps Wales and it does not do too badly. However, that is not a great comparison and that is the problem. We are setting a very low benchmark and congratulating ourselves if we almost hit it. In the context of constitutional change, thinking through what that would be, why would the South not be the relevant comparator if it is offering the same tax, public policy and education model? It is not so much that it is a fair comparison today because I do not think there is a simple fix today. Too many moving parts would need to change but if we are inheriting what would inevitably be some sort of economic deficit on day one after constitutional change, we would be asking the population to vote for something where the political system is saying it has a plan to get from a deficit to something where we can cope. We can borrow for a while but we cannot borrow forever so what is the solution?

There is no obvious reason Northern Ireland would not be just as attractive as an FDI base if it were offering the same policy bundle and with the same conditions in the education system. There is a transition there, and how long that would be would depend on how many people could be attracted back versus changing the system itself.

That is the opportunity. It is a question of fixing what we can in the short term in Northern Ireland by having those comparisons. My experience suggests that the Civil Service is very nervous with even Scottish comparisons. My experience of dealing with excellent Northern Irish civil servants is that as long as the SNP is in power, a policy comparison with Scotland is almost as controversial as a policy comparison with the Republic of Ireland. England is the only safe bet because nobody will critique that comparison even though it is often not a good policy choice to be considering. Those are the issues.

In respect of the labour force, a larger and stronger population helps. The National Training Fund may not be on the agenda of the meeting but employers have got away with murder in describing a tax as their money. What would happen if I were to write to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, to state I only want my taxes to be spent on the health system this year or I would like my taxes back if I go to college? In some ways, we have allowed employers to get away with the assumption that it was a special tax that the State should kindly give back to them. Perhaps a robust dialogue should be had with employers. We should listen to where they think the money should be best spent but it is ultimately the State's money. I know we do a slight Erasmus thing now in higher education, which is welcome. The Erasmus scheme works for the EU. It funds the initiative heavily because it knows that moving people across borders, mostly at a young age, has a considerable impact in terms of life opportunities, giving those people different perspectives and opening them up to different ways of thinking about things. We could imagine a North-South Erasmus scheme for apprentices and for the higher education and school system. That would be a worthy investment of funds whereby we are not just picking up the tab for the Conservative Party Government in London but are doing something with added value and difference. That would be a thing.

To come back to the key point around FDI, we need to fix education and infrastructure. Ultimately, we need a political offering that can persuade people to get over the line. I was in the room when Intel was persuaded to invest heavily in Leixlip. It had done its homework on graduates and had been persuaded by that. The Minister was in the room, which was fundamental to it happening. Intel wanted to know if there would be a problem if it needed to widen the roads outside the plant. They were country roads in those days. A civil servant could not have said there would be no problem because it was a matter for the county council. A civil servant could not answer that question. However, a Minister could answer the question and offer a guarantee there would be no problem in a way the chief executive of Intel was willing to believe. That is not possible in Northern Ireland. It is not possible that someone in a room could answer that question honestly and deliver on it 18 months later. It is challenging to see a short-term solution for those softer issues around FDI. Those issues would disappear in the context of constitutional change. It is not just wishful thinking that the benchmark could be changed. To be fair to Northern Ireland at the moment, the benchmarks are different, as Mr. Hetherington said. However, in the context of the question of potential constitutional change, why would the benchmark not be Cork? Insofar as we can imagine the future, the question is what we can do to put a fair comparison out there.

Professor John FitzGerald

A study was done by Professor Iulia Siedschlag of the ESRI for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland on FDI. It was a study of all EU regions and a hugely important factor in deciding whether FDI went somewhere was the proportion of people with third level educations. I am agnostic on the issue but in a united Ireland, what would happen to the supply of graduates in Northern Ireland? Would people from a predominantly Protestant background who are Northern Ireland graduates in Great Britain be more likely to come back to Northern Ireland? Would people from Northern Ireland leave Northern Ireland? That is what happened on independence in 1922.

For various reasons, I was looking at the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1912 and 1913. There was substantial outflow from Belfast, which was losing policemen hand over fist because of the prospect of home rule. People were taking jobs elsewhere in the Commonwealth. How will a united Ireland affect perceptions in the Protestant community or among people from Protestant backgrounds in Northern Ireland? How will they behave? Will they come back from Britain or will they be less likely to do so? The number of graduates and the availability of skilled labour in Northern Ireland will determine whether it gets FDI.

In the 1970s in the Republic, the IDA wanted to spread FDI like butter and it failed to do so. By the 1990s, it was encouraging FDI to go where the graduates wanted to live. It was the supply of graduates that made the decision. It was not a decision of the firms. They went to Dublin, Cork and Galway. Why Galway? One of the studies we did for the Department of Finance stated that Galway has two prominent theatre groups. The Department of Finance had a canary. It thought we were going to suggest it should subsidise theatre groups across the island. However, Galway was the only place, other than Dublin, that was culturally attractive. Irish people returning from abroad would relocate there even if they were not from Galway and foreigners were keen on it. There is a cultural factor to where graduates want to live.

I was asked in 2000 to speak to the Tasmanian Prime Minister about the Irish success story. I said all the usual stuff about education, the EU and so on. The first question he asked was what role Irish music had in our success story. That stumped me, but it was a very good question. Why did Irish people come back and why did so many skilled foreigners say they would not go to Bremen or Birmingham but would go to Dublin instead? The cultural attractiveness of Dublin was one answer. The bulk of the workforce of Google and other companies are not Irish but they could attract people from all over Europe. That is why they were successful. The success of Northern Ireland, whether in the United Kingdom or in a united Ireland, will depend on making it an exciting place. People who live there find it an exciting place. We are, however, going to have to go out and sell it.

Ireland is probably the richest county after Luxembourg in the EU. Getting the people of Romania, Italy and Poland to stump up money for a united Ireland is not going to happen. The EU budgetary contribution from Northern Ireland up to 2018 was approximately €270 million. In a united Ireland, it would be €470 million because Britain had a rebate. In terms of the actual EU contributions, a united Ireland would be more expensive for Northern Ireland than remaining in the UK. Far more important is the uses and sources table for the Northern Ireland economy. It is totally integrated into the United Kingdom economy. We have seen that in the context of the protocol. There were real problems for Northern Ireland with stuff coming from the UK. In a united Ireland, all those links whereby goods from Northern Ireland go into the UK and goods from the UK are part of what is made in Northern Ireland will be broken. In the long run, Northern Ireland will be more fully integrated. For goods, it is already part of the Single Market and it will be a part of the Single Market for services under a united Ireland. It would eventually gain in that regard. However, there would be an enormous instantaneous loss when it left the UK because so much of its economy is linked to Great Britain. We have done a test on this with Brexit and the supply chain issues. A bit too much fuss was made about the obstacles to bringing stuff into Northern Ireland. However, those issues were trivial compared with what would happen if Northern Ireland were to become a part of the EU. The EU issue is complex. It will be severely negative to begin with because of those links. It will cost more. We on this part of the island see how advantageous it is in the long run. However, it is not a straightforward issue.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

We have obviously seen the links and the reorientation of the supply chains in terms of goods North and South as well. There is also a relationship between the South and Britain. It does not mean there is a zero situation whereby all ties are cut off and there are no longer east-west supply chains. I do not want to take up more time on that point.

Obviously, the EU said it would welcome the North back in the event of reunification. We are dealing with different economics as well because we are looking at lower productivity and all those things that would have to be taken into consideration.

I am very conscious that Mr. Hetherington has not spoken yet.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

To emphasise the cultural point, at Ulster University's Coleraine campus, we have done a great deal of work in respect of developing courses and curriculums in order to make sure that students are able to pursue qualifications that make them employment ready. Much work has been done in that space. We asked our international students what it is that attracted them here, hoping to hear back about all the work that we had done. The answer we got was "Game of Thrones". We can laugh at that, but it goes to show the importance of the cultural aspect.

I will make one point on FDI. I know we are pressed for time. We talked a lot about human capital and skills development. However, there are other soft infrastructure developments on which we can collaborate now around not just creating but enhancing, where they do exist, postgraduate research hubs around the industry clusters we already have in the Belfast-Dublin economic corridor area. That is a tangible thing we could do now that would be of benefit to continued FDI in the future.

I will briefly mention one other thing in terms of hard infrastructure. We talked a lot about that. I agree that we need to work on the Dublin-Belfast-Derry rail link, road development, etc. Over the next ten to 20 years, we also have to be very conscious of the impact that hard infrastructure development is going to have on the environment and the consistency with meeting net zero targets by 2050. It is another obstacle really that we all need to solve on this island and elsewhere.

Professor John Doyle

On EU funding, it is not the size of the cheque the EU might write. It might want to have a photo opportunity and hand over some money; I suspect it would.

If we look at the political change in central Europe, however, Lithuania is now per capita a wealthier country than the United Kingdom having gone from being one of the poorest places. Romania is now 77% of the EU average in terms of GDP per head of population. Moldova, which is the far side of an imaginary line in some ways with a very similar cultural and economic set-up, was one of the poorest places in central Europe. It was access to the EU markets over that extended period. Obviously, there was EU investment as well, but it was the market access. The cheques would not have made a difference. It was the access to the market that fundamentally transformed the central European economy with the particular forms and everything else that were there. However, the case of Moldova and Romania is interesting because the big difference between the two was that one had access to the market and the other did not, even though they are culturally and historically quite similar.

An Cathaoirleach

Dr. Farry from the Alliance Party is joining us online.

Dr. Stephen Farry

I wish all our witnesses a good afternoon. I will make a few comments first before I ask a few questions in a moment. This is reflecting largely from a Northern perspective and also as someone who was previously Minister for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland many years ago.

We are very conscious of the structural problems that exist in Northern Ireland at present, including, in particular, the productivity challenge and, as a subset of that, the educational skills issues that are key in that regard. I also acknowledge the change in life expectancy on the island and how that has flipped in terms of performance over the past 20 years.

There is a growing divergence in terms of economic and financial performance on the island. It is perhaps a slightly different issue than the level of integration on a socioeconomic level. We are currently going through, obviously, a governance gap without an executive and assembly, which is seriously hampering our ability to keep up and put in place new policy and investments. There is also a budget crisis whereby there is now a defunding of skills and other economic drivers which, again, is seriously hindering our ability to keep up. We look with considerable envy at the very large budget surplus that now exists in Dublin by comparison.

From a parity point of view, we are open-minded on the issue of the future political constitutional arrangement on the island. We are happy to engage in discussions on a without prejudice basis. However, I would make the point that it is possible to envisage a new economic model for Northern Ireland, including good North-South all-island co-operation, without constitutional and political change. It is important to make that point clear. There may well be arguments for that change but there is still space for economic transformation without that level of change actually happening.

Professor Fitzgerald responded to one of the points I wanted to make regarding the implications of Northern Ireland actually rejoining the European Union as part of a united Ireland in terms of what would happen with east-west trade. There is no need to go back on that point. As I said, however, it is something I am very conscious of in that while it is important that we have borders on the island and that there are more movements on a daily basis on the island, there is still a greater level of economic integration by value on an east-west basis than North-South. That will take time to change.

In terms of a few questions, to what extent does the panel think the current surplus that has been run up in Dublin is actually going to be sustainable into the future? Is that a momentary situation or is that something that is likely to persist in the medium and long term?

When we look at education and think about how things could be integrated in the future, what consideration should we give to non-financial barriers to change? What I mean, particularly in education, is that we have seen radically different systems emerge over the past number of decades regarding what people do in terms of qualifications and even how we grade skills on the skills ladder. The system we use in Northern Ireland is different from that used in the South. It is about how those sorts of barriers can be overcome or how we can find a third or unified way forward in those particular regards.

The witnesses might give an idea of what they assess the current level of integration economically to be on the island and how much further that can actually go. My reading is that while we have seen changes happening over the past couple of decades, it is still relatively low. Again, if we look at something like education, on a tertiary level, there is much more of a flow of Northern Ireland students to Great Britain than there is to the South. Virtually no one in Northern Ireland goes southwards in terms of further education. There is a further education flow, particularly from County Donegal, into the North West Regional College in County Derry and some into other Northern universities. Overall, however, those flows in both directions are substantially below perhaps where people would expect those to be. To what extent is the current non-recognition of qualifications a potential barrier? Those are a few thoughts in terms of looking to the future. I am happy for people to respond to those in turn. I will maybe start with Mr. Hetherington in terms of Northern solidarity and then go to the two Johns.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I thank Dr. Farry. I will let the other guys comment on the sustainability of the Southern surplus.

Financial barriers to education in the North is something Dr. Farry and I talked about in his previous role as Minister for Employment and Learning. It is an area in which some progress has been made but we are not where we need to be when it comes to creating clearer pathways. It is this issue of higher education having a higher status than further education when, in fact, many people who pursue their education in a further education college could quite often do just as well as those who are not well-suited to university but who, because of status reasons, try to pursue degree courses.

There is work to be done to address the status of further education, FE, relative to higher education, HE, or academic relative to professional and technical education. That is one very big point.

Another challenge for the FE sector in the North - this goes to the institutes of technology, IT, point which the guys were making before - is that FE in some respects has such a very broad remit where, in some instances, it is bringing in young people with no qualifications at all and very significant numeracy and literacy problems. On the other end of the scale, they are awarding degrees. That breadth of scope could potentially be narrowed because, between higher education, further education, and the post-primary and secondary school sector, those different parts of the education sector in some respects are eating each other's lunch. Increasingly, we are seeing schools now delivering vocational qualifications, FE colleges are delivering A levels and, in some instances, moving into the degree space, and we are seeing universities increasingly becoming involved in apprenticeships. There is an argument that the wrong institution or type of institution is delivering the wrong type of course. That creates a confusion.

In addition to that, as Dr. Farry will know, that whole skills environment sits under more than one Government Minister. Trying to get co-ordination with respect to the provision of the skills infrastructure in Northern Ireland is, therefore, a real issue and challenge.

On the final point around the flow of students raised by Deputy Conway-Walsh, I have made some comments on this before in that it is not at a level in either direction which it would be expected to be on an island. There is an issue which Northern Ireland has here specifically. Many people talk about the brain drain and the number of young people who go to study in England, Scotland and Wales. Whenever you look at the statistics and compare on a regional basis, the problem is that Northern Ireland does not so much have a brain drain issue - it retains a reasonable number of its young people - but that it has a chronic inflow and is unable to attract either students from Great Britain or from the South to study there. The point that has been made a number of times is that there is a reluctance, partly for social and political reasons but also for economic reasons, on the part of young people, after they have graduated, to come back. Much work needs to be done around creating a social and political environment where young people will want to live and come back. There are also the economic pull factors where we can help to sell Northern Ireland and, in the context of this conversation, to sell the island as a whole.

Dr. Stephen Farry

I thank Mr. Hetherington. Do either of the Johns wish to make a contribution here?

Professor John FitzGerald

On the FE, HE and IT issue, the Department of Finance summer economic statement published last week was interesting. There is a box, which nobody noticed, on the dramatic drop in the number of people who have done apprenticeships and that there are certain skills which are in very short supply in the Republic. I suspect if you are a plumber or electrician, nobody will care if you qualified in the North because you will be very welcome in the South if you want to come. The problem is that so few want to come.

On the integration on the island, there are some things like education where we have identified today a number of areas in which the qualifications for entry to third level do not work well on the island, in particular, from a North to South direction.

There are things happening in health. It would make sense to have one health system on this island. If you look at the way in which the National Health Service, NHS, operates in Britain, and it operates much better in Britain than it does in Northern Ireland, the minimum population for a deanery is approximately 5 million people and it is organised around a few very big hospitals which are very good. We have far too many hospitals on this island and it should be an all-island provision. As an economist, I was very unhappy with many of Mary Harney’s policies in the Progressive Democrats. She, however, made a major difference to the health of the people of Ireland through integrating the cancer services and concentrating them in a small number of hospitals. A person may be seen much more rapidly in one of the smaller hospitals, but his or her life expectancy will be much better if he or she goes to one of the very big hospitals in Cork or Dublin. A very big political issue both North and South is that we both need to develop a health system around centres of excellence, and the secondary care and so on can be provided more widely. With respect to medical training, young doctors should be exposed to a range of different practices and whatever, and that should be done on an all-island basis. The NHS had a much better training of doctors. We have begun to improve the system in the Republic, but doing it on an all-island basis would help. There are many opportunities to improve there.

Retail has gone backwards. We were part of the United Kingdom retail sector up to Brexit. It has been very costly for the Republic and less costly for Northern Ireland, but it is a problem. There has been disintegration rather than integration there.

There is one area where there is integration but I am concerned it could break up. I was a member of the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation and was one of three people representing Northern Ireland in negotiating with the Republic to set up the all-island electricity market. It delivered on many things. The Republic failed to deliver on the North-South interconnector, which has still not been delivered upon. The obstacle is now in Northern Ireland. I am concerned that market could break up. Northern Ireland does not see a benefit in it and it is possible there could be problems in the future.

There are areas then in retailing and in the energy market where there have been successes in the past but in which we have gone backwards. Much work needs to be done in the energy area to make that work for this island.

On business, there are signs of greater cross-Border co-operation by business with respect to sourcing products and we are seeing an increase in trade. There is probably more progress in the business area but it is broadly in the public sector that I would be concerned.

Dr. Stephen Farry

Before I turn to Professor Doyle, I wish to add that I agree with most of what Professor FitzGerald has said, but one point to make on the health aspect, which is very pertinent, is that the new salary contracts in Sláintecare are now, potentially, 30% to 40%, more attractive than salaries in Northern Ireland. I am not sure there is much that can be done about that in the short to medium term but it is now going to create a potential major distortion in workforce planning across the island.

Will Professor Doyle pick up the point around the surplus in the Irish finances and how sustainable that is?

Professor John Doyle

I would need a crystal ball rather than a degree to know about the future surplus. It would certainly be high risk to assume this surplus would be maintained in the long run. Broadly speaking, that is the consensus among both the political class and the economists in the South. Perhaps in a few more years we might have more confidence it has settled into a space, but it would be high risk.

The debate, therefore, tends to be around how much of it do we put in to create a sovereign wealth fund, do we put some of it in for the inevitable rainy days in the future or, at the very least, do we invest in capital projects which would release future benefits and bring tax revenue in the future? The nature of economies is that they wiggle up and down so it would be unlikely that surplus would maintain itself at that level into the future. There are some ways in which we are attracted by the idea of a sovereign wealth fund and the reality is Ireland’s debt rating now is so low that we could actually make more money investing that surplus money than by paying off debt early. In some ways, it does not make sense to pay debt off early given the rates that we are able to borrow at. It would make more sense to invest it in something which would give us a solid return. It is, therefore, there to dip into in the future.

My colleague, Professor Brendan O’Leary from the University of Pennsylvania, was in Dublin during the week making an appeal for a certain percentage of it to be put into a sovereign wealth fund explicitly for the transition costs of a united Ireland. If it does not happen in 25 years, then we spend it on something else, but we direct in this way in the meantime.

It was not that we would put in all the money. It was almost like a symbolic gesture: we know there are going to be transition costs and we will put some of this money into an investment fund each year as long as the surplus lasts. Certainly, some sort of sovereign wealth fund or capital investment makes more sense than assuming it would be there every year for current expenditure. In that regard, a transition fund might make sense.

On apprenticeships, I agree that it is the one area where neither North nor South have we managed to resolve the issue of chronic shortages. Part of this is that the nature of the industry has moved so much, effectively, to bogus self-employment. If a specialist contractor is effectively working on his own, what sort of apprenticeship training can he give to a young person? He is making his money out of doing one thing. Members of my own family are making a good living out of putting up stainless steel and glass constructions in airports, schools and hospitals, and that is how they make their money. It is no training for a young person who, four years later, only knows one thing, so they tend not to take on apprentices. There is so much of that across the sector and we have not fixed it either North or South.

I disagree slightly with some of the points on further education, FE. One of the successes with further education in the South has been not to follow the German example of dividing kids at age 16, and even Germany now recognises that was a historic mistake. Kids do not know what they are going to do at 19, much less 16, and we want to keep them on the same pathway for as long as possible. One of the reasons FE has managed to improve its status among young people is that 93% of people get as far as the leaving certificate. I am not saying there is an identical opportunity for kids from poorer schools and more affluent schools, but at least they are all doing the same qualification, with the opportunity through access programmes to get university places. The FE sector is mostly offering post-A level qualifications and is not competing with schools and doing different things. That has given it better status and has allowed people to go from FE to higher education, and some progress has been announced on that this week. This has made FE much more attractive and, therefore, if we were thinking about whether to bring FE back to age 16 in Northern Ireland to solve our skills shortages, I do not think it will work. We have to solve the problem of getting kids to stay and do their A levels, and then make FE an attractive proposition for them. It is getting them to age 18 in the school system where Northern Ireland has a big problem on a European scale, and it is very different to what is happening in the South at the moment. For me, that is also the solution to FE.

Professor John FitzGerald

There is one additional point which concerns Erasmus for civil servants. I joined the Department of Finance in September 1972 and have seen the transformation of the Department of Finance. Everybody had to go to Brussels at the time, and at the age of 23, I found myself representing Ireland at a meeting in Brussels. The height of one's expectation had been to go to London to beg for access to the British market for a few people. Now, all civil servants, once they reach a certain level, will have to play on a European stage.

Northern Ireland had far more economists in the Northern Ireland civil service in 2007. I talked to them and I asked if they would lend a few to the Department of Finance, which had none in the Republic. The Department of Finance said we did not need them and, of course, the North was not able to lend them, and we saw the financial disaster in the Republic. A few bright northerners might have sorted things out. Having worked with the Northern Ireland administration, I have been to London representing Northern Ireland and was treated like dirt by the Treasury. In the same year, the future Secretary of the Treasury, Nick Macpherson, came to the ESRI for our advice on what might happen if the UK joined the monetary union. It is a good idea to swap civil servants occasionally. We now find in the Irish administration French and German civil servants and even, occasionally, British civil servants coming here. The problem, of course, is finding the language skills and we would need to send them abroad. However, I think a swap or a North-South Erasmus scheme would be very good for us both. Whatever happens in the future, it would be good preparation.

Dr. Stephen Farry

I thank the witnesses for the responses.

An Cathaoirleach

When I was going to school a long time ago, there was the secondary school and there was the gairmscoil or vocational school. Professor Doyle is quite right. Students did two years in the vocational school and they got their trade, but that changed radically when the vocational schools started doing the leaving certificate and students started to stay on, and they have gone on to college very successfully. The point that Professor Doyle makes is important. We need to try to get people to a leaving certificate or A level standard and then move on after that. I call Senator Black.

Senator Frances Black

I thank the witnesses for coming in. It has been fascinating and we have all learned so much from listening to their statements and the responses to the questions. I have read the opening statements and I will ask my questions individually, if that is okay.

I come first to Professor Doyle. My question is on the whole area of congestion in Dublin, which there is no doubt is horrific at the moment. I am on the Committee on Health, where we hear all of the time from the health services about how emergency departments are packed out and under fierce pressure, and one location, Linn Dara, was closed recently because of lack of staff. It all comes down to the housing issue. They had to close down places because they did not have proper facilities for people to live. I want to ask about congestion issues and how that is impeding foreign direct investment, FDI. In the event of constitutional change on the island, is Belfast uniquely suited to benefit from new or redistributed FDI? That is my first question.

I looked over the pivotal study that was mentioned in Professor FitzGerald’s opening statement and it paints a dire picture of how young people in the North perceive the place they are from. That was dark and a little depressing but it is hopeful that young people seem to express a very strong social consciousness and a desire to live in a more integrated society, which we have seen a lot recently. Does Professor FitzGerald have any ideas as to what can be done to prevent the high level of emigration of Northern graduates?

In his opening statement, Mr. Hetherington spoke about getting economically inactive people in the North back into the labour market, and Deputy Conway-Walsh also touched on this. In a previous session of this committee, we heard from social security experts who spoke of the harshness of Britain's labour activation policies yet it seems they are not achieving their aim. Is there any research or precedent to suggest a more supportive education and training-based approach would be more successful? Those are my three questions and I would like to hear what the witnesses have to say.

Professor John Doyle

I would credit a colleague of mine in DCU, Professor Edgar Morgenroth, who often writes with Professor FitzGerald, for pointing out what is almost a statistical anomaly in European economies whereby second cities tend to be about half of the size of the capital city. There is no rhyme no or reason for why that is true in many respects and it is just a random statistical quirk. However, there is a sort of underlying reason. Capital cities outgrow themselves but small cities are maybe not quite big enough for the Googles of the world, which want to be somewhere where they can employ 5,000 people, not 500. Professor Fitzgerald pointed earlier to the impossibility from an IDA point of view of satisfying ministerial pressure to bring investment to smaller towns. However socially desirable it might be, the companies were not interested and they just did not see that they could find the range of skills they needed at that scale. Beyond Cork, we have had some successes but we have struggled to get a more balanced regional economy. Deputy Conway-Walsh talked about the west and the north-west in particular, and Limerick over the years has struggled, despite an upward swing more recently.

The Belfast region has a complementary experience to Dublin's. It was bigger than Dublin at the time of partition and one calculation is that 80% of GDP was in the four north-eastern counties of modern Northern Ireland, and it has an engineering tradition, so it is not like we are just dividing up the same jobs differently. It is a different sort of scale and it is big enough to be interesting to a big multinational coming in. However, at the moment, in terms of the research we are doing, from talking to Google and others in Dublin, they know rental rates in Belfast are about 45% of what they have to pay at Grand Canal Dock and various other places, wage levels are lower and they have some sort of expectation that maybe they could attract graduates back from England or Scotland, and some are available locally, but not a single one of them has actually made the move.

I am not saying that there has been no investment, but none of those large companies has decided it can reduce its costs dramatically by moving two hours away. The reasons for this are complex, but with a different policy or constitutional framework in place, Belfast would have a scale that Cork, Limerick and Galway did not. In this way, it would be complementary to Dublin as opposed to Dublin losing out. It provides a larger labour market and expertise with which to attract companies.

In terms of the public sector, most of the evidence suggests that congestion was the single largest reason that the European Medicines Agency, despite nearly coming to Ireland, decided not to. Housing and education were also considerations. On every other score, we probably had it marginally. If that was the case for a quasi-public sector agency, how much more so would it be for a large Silicon Valley company that could not see where employees would come from and live, especially if it was bringing in multilingual workers from abroad? It would look at the Daft.ie website and see that housing was not available at a level at which it was willing to pay salaries.

This is the complementary and hopeful piece. I accept Professor FitzGerald’s comments about the economic challenges. They are real, so it is a matter of getting on a trajectory that could meet them.

Probably the single largest impact of partition has been in the north west between Donegal and Derry. It has been equally impactful on both sides of the Border. Derry is a large city on the island of Ireland, but it is almost non-existent in terms of student numbers in my own sector, that of higher education. To companies, Derry does not look like the kind of smaller city at home where they can pick up graduates and, therefore, it has struggled to attract investment. The Derry-Strabane area has low incomes by European standards, not just by standards on the island of Ireland. It could be an attractive offering, but any sort of order has a regulatory impact on a company. For example, migration policy has had an impact on Derry recently in terms of trying to get spousal visas. Getting visas for employees has been okay and someone might want to move to Derry, but if his or her spouse has a job in Letterkenny, they need two visas. The UK is not keen on a visa for someone who is working in Letterkenny, though. That is not how these visas are supposed to work. It is difficult to foresee short-term non-political solutions to these problems. It is not just a case of a technical fix addressing them easily. In another context, though, the situation would be different.

Professor FitzGerald is right to point out the challenges and I do not dispute them, but I would swing more towards the optimistic end of the spectrum, as there are prospects that would make a significant change.

Senator Frances Black

A couple of months ago, I attended a presentation where people spoke about a high-speed train from Belfast to Dublin, which I thought was unbelievable. They said the trip would only take half an hour and there would be services on the half hour, allowing people to commute. It was an interesting idea.

Professor John FitzGerald

In deference to the Cathaoirleach, Drogheda was bigger than Belfast in 1820 and Belfast was bigger than Dublin in 1920.

An Cathaoirleach

And Drogheda still has the best Deputies. There are three of us.

Professor John FitzGerald

Regarding pivotal immigration, it is for the people of Northern Ireland to come together and sell themselves. How does one persuade people that they can have a life and not be identified by their background in Northern Ireland? It is an interesting issue. In their answers to the religion question in the 2011 census in Scotland, people from Northern Ireland said “No religion” or would not answer. For people from the Republic, the answers were the same as they would have been in the Republic. They did not care about writing “Catholic” or whatever. Clearly, people from Northern Ireland go to Britain because they do not want to be identified. This is a matter for people on both sides in Northern Ireland, although in a sense, it is the other side pointing it out. I do not know how to tackle that.

What happened in the Republic was interesting because we began with a civil war. There were also people who did not want independence, particularly among the Protestant community. The Second World War made a difference. I was going through old photographs. My grandfather had been on one side of the Civil War. One of my uncles joined the Army. At his wedding, four Army officers – his friends – were holding swords. Two were anti-Treaty, two were pro-Treaty, one was Church of Ireland and three were Catholic. It was like Douglas Gageby, who was Church of Ireland and an Army officer. The Second World War made everyone the same. We do not want that as a solution in Northern Ireland, but it is a question of finding some way of uniting to make Northern Ireland a better place. That is for the people of Northern Ireland to do. I would keep my mouth shut on this issue if I went north of the Border and leave it to them.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I am glad I was not asked that question because I do not know the answer either. To be optimistic, there is a much larger, younger and growing cohort of people who do not necessarily identify with one side of the community or another, and many of those who do identify with one side of the community have a much greater recognition of the need and desire to live together and leave the past in the past. The situation is probably a little more positive than we are painting it, but that is not to say that we do not have a significant journey to travel.

I will answer the question on economic inactivity with an anecdote about the Belfast-Dublin train that, for me, underlines the need for significant investment. I had a meeting in Dublin a couple of years ago. I drove to Lanyon Place train station in Belfast and parked my car, but I was running late and just missed the train. I jumped in the car, drove to Newry and got on the same train. That should not have happened. It means there is a problem.

Northern Ireland has the worst rate of economic inactivity across all 12 UK regions. The main issue is long-term sick. There were 100,000 people long-term sick pre Covid. The number is now at approximately 130,000. That level is significantly higher than the rest of the UK. Clearly, Covid has had an impact on the health service. Additionally, people replying to surveys in Northern Ireland are more likely to say they have more severe levels of disability or illness than people in other parts of the UK. A significant health intervention is required in order to bring those numbers back under control or to more manageable levels.

Another economically inactive group where there is potential to bring people back into the labour market is those with caring responsibilities. Their numbers have been falling significantly over the past ten to 15 years.

Among these two groups – long-term sick and those with caring responsibilities – there are approximately 50,000 people who have expressed a desire to get back to work. To put that number in context, there are 22,000 people unemployed. As such, there is a large pool of talent that needs to be tapped. There is an issue with this group in that they typically have lower levels of skills or qualifications. They also have long gaps in their employment histories. Even though many employers have vacancies they cannot fill, many people who have an intention or desire to return to work do not meet the employers’ requirements.

As to how to address this, childcare arrangements and making childcare more affordable are measures that could be taken in respect of people with caring responsibilities. That would be expensive to do across the economy as a whole.

If we want to encourage people with childcare responsibilities at least back into training, there is no reason we could not or should not have free childcare in further education colleges and higher education institutions. I believe that is certainly a lower cost way to try to tackle the problem. There is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done. We had what were called labour market partnerships, which were operated on a local council basis. They provided more wraparound care for economically inactive people, to try to move them closer to the labour market again. Unfortunately, in the most recent budget, funding for those labour market partnerships was severely cut. That is one of the areas I would try to address to help increase the skills and work readiness of a lot of those people.

Senator Frances Black

Does intergenerational trauma play a role in people taking so much time off? Is that part of it?

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I do not know the answer to that question. I know that when I was a graduate, just as the Troubles were ending, Northern Ireland had the highest long-term sickness rate in the UK. That was put down to the Troubles. Ten years later, as we moved into the 2000s and 2010s, Northern Ireland had the highest long-term sickness rate in the UK. That was attributed to the legacy of the Troubles. We are now in 2023, and Northern Ireland still has by far the largest long-term sickness rate in the UK. Yes, the Troubles are still clearly having an impact from an intergenerational perspective. However, there must be other things going on. Whenever we look at areas of disadvantage in Northern Ireland, they are in geographic pockets of deprivation. That lends itself to targeted geographical interventions, which are ideally delivered by local councils. It is a shame that funding for those labour market partnerships has been cut.

Professor John Doyle

I agree with everything Mr. Hetherington has said. The other difficulty in Northern Ireland is the length of the public sector health waiting lists. Someone may be ill and out of work for something that is easily fixed or needs a procedure to allow the person to go back to work. In England, statistically almost nobody waits longer than 12 months for a procedure once they are referred. In Northern Ireland, as some of us here well know, there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting longer. People may have a desire to get back to work. That compounds issues around poverty and geographically focused deprivation, and other things that lead people to be on disability or long-term illness payments. They physically cannot get the healthcare they need to get back to work. There are multiple layers as to why that will be hard to crack.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

I agree with Professor Doyle's point about waiting lists and the health service. There is also another point I should have made about welfare payments. There is currently a benefits trap for people with caring responsibilities and those who are on welfare. They may want to go to a further education college to engage in training but that would put their benefits at risk. Once an individual's benefits are put at risk, he or she will withdraw from training, so there is no benefit saving from that policy. A policy should definitely be taken that is more sympathetic to retention of benefits when someone wants to engage in training to make themselves more work ready.

Senator Frances Black

I thank Mr. Hetherington.

An Cathaoirleach

It is almost 4.05 p.m. and we must finish by 4.30 p.m. I am conscious of the witnesses' time and expertise. Two people have not spoken yet, so we will share the time to ensure we finish at 4.30 p.m.

Mr. Chris Hazzard

This has been a really informative and interesting meeting. I want to pick up on a few different points. Some of the questions I wanted to ask have already been asked so I will not repeat them. I will first touch on a point Senator Blaney raised about integrated education, on which Mr. Hetherington was going to get back to the committee with some figures. I will speak from my experience. I find that great stock is often placed on the hard facts of what is and is not an integrated school. I went to a large Catholic grammar school where about one third of the pupils were not actually Catholic. To a certain extent, it was effectively integrated. That is a growing trend. I find in this debate that we are sometimes a little blinded, speaking from Dublin, where more than 95% of the primary schools in this State are Catholic. In the North, Catholic schools account for approximately 40% of schools. It is the same with post-primary schools. In the North, between 25% and 29% of post-primary schools are Catholic. In this State, the figure is approaching 50%. We need to have a wider discussion about what integration is. In my constituency of south Down, there is a large state grammar school, which might be termed a Protestant grammar school. Again, approximately 40% of the pupils who go there are Catholic. The biggest problem is not the religious integration but the social integration. There is a large working-class Protestant estate quite close to that school. The kids from that estate do not go to the elite state grammar school. That is the problem. It is not the number of Catholics or Protestants; it is the social mix in our schools. I will go back to the point made about academic selection. That is where we have social class division. That is having the biggest impact on our schooling system. I thought it was worth stressing that point.

I have a question about infrastructure. I am speaking as the former Minister for Infrastructure in the Executive in 2016 and 2017. There was a list of priorities but Stormont did not have a capacity to borrow money. Our local councils in the North have better borrowing powers than Stormont. There are also low taxes, low wages and whatever else. There is not the capacity to deliver these schemes. All-Ireland rail and the rest of it have been mentioned. This is where we need to be looking now. What is the potential of something like a sovereign wealth fund to work with international partners? As a minister, I went to Beijing in China to talk to international partners about high-speed rail. That was not just Belfast to Dublin, but Derry to Belfast and Dublin to Cork. It is about the ability to open up the island. I think that is where the all-island rail review later this year has to look. We need to be able to work together North and South. How do we make the hinterland of Donegal more connected to Derry? In my part of the world, the east border region, Newry is one of the fastest growing urban centres on the island. How do we connect south Down, south Armagh, north Louth and right down?

I have another question in light of all that. I note Wales has a Future Generations Commissioner. If the witnesses were to find themselves in that position looking 50 years down the line, what are the most important measures we need to do now to make some of those things a reality? That is what we need to look at. Too often, we look at the next five years, if we are lucky, and not just at this year. We are talking about constitutional change in the next 50 years or whatever the case may be.

Today we have discussed issues such as infrastructure and mutual recognition of qualifications. What are the most important things we need to do now? Invest NI was mentioned. In south Down, when you talk to local businesses about their experiences dealing with Invest NI, you find its reputation is on the floor. People have nothing positive to say. I repeatedly hear that the only advice businesses hear from Invest NI is that they should relocate to Belfast. That is the shared experience of many businesses in one of the more peripheral areas of the North. There is maybe a consensus that Invest NI has run its course, and is now about to undergo a major reform in outlook and how it works.

Overall, what are the two or three key areas we need to look at? Some, for example, infrastructure, have been touched on today. If the witnesses were to find themselves in the seat of a future generations commissioner in Dublin, what two or three areas would they look at? I thank them again. This has been a very interesting meeting.

An Cathaoirleach

Mr. Hazzard made a very important point. The witnesses could write our policy for us.

Mr. Chris Hazzard

I do not know how well paid the Welsh commissioner is.

Professor John FitzGerald

In the Republic investment is paid for out of taxation. Borrowing is not the solution. Northern Ireland has more money per head than any other UK region.

It is a question of reprioritising investment. As we know in the Republic, it is exceptionally painful. One area Northern Ireland has invested in far more than anywhere else in the UK is housing; it is twice the investment. That is one reason housing is cheap in Northern Ireland. We in the Republic have invested too little but Northern Ireland is a bit like the Ireland of the 1950s. We borrowed a huge amount - I will not go into the history of it - but it was a disaster. We spent it on social housing when the population was falling, instead of developing infrastructure. It was very bad; there were empty social houses. Some productive infrastructure needs to be invested in long term. Northern Ireland must invest in roads, energy and the environment. Looking across the developed world, we need to invest a lot in the environmental area such as retrofitting houses. That will require significant state investment. Repurposing some current expenditure on housing for retrofitting will be important. There is no pipeline of energy infrastructure, such as windmills, coming along in Northern Ireland. That would be provided by the private sector but the wires to make it work are important. They will not be a charge on public expenditure, but on electricity consumers. Regarding transport infrastructure, I am less keen on high-speed trains. I like the idea of a train that connects Dublin to Belfast in an hour, but the constraint is that it could be done in an hour if we got rid of the DART in the Republic. The problem is the-----

An Cathaoirleach

Malahide into Connolly Station.

Professor John FitzGerald

Drogheda would not like that.

An Cathaoirleach

Definitely not.

Professor John FitzGerald

Investment in the North-South is worthwhile but it is about investing in public transport. I am surprised when I go to Belfast. I use the train because where I happen to be going is on the Bangor to Balmoral axis. I use the train all the time; it is great. I do not meet anybody else who uses the train in Belfast. It is about public transport. The Republic needs to spend a lot more on public transport. The Luas is a great success but the problem is: where do you get the money? On the environment, London should provide more for all of the UK. The Climate Change Committee or equivalent body - I am on the Climate Change Advisory Council - in the UK said that. Long term, some of the environmental stuff should have greater funding in London but in some of the other areas, it involves repurposing the North's own money.

Professor John Doyle

Last month, I gave evidence to the Welsh commission established by the Labour Government to examine the future of Wales. It studies everything, but because politics is dominated by the Labour Party in Wales and by people not in favour of independence. However, the members are looking at constitutional reform and independence is on the table to keep it all party, but it is not really what the commission examines. They are just looking at the options. They are genuinely trying to cast its eyes at least 20 or 25 years - perhaps not 50 - into the future. The problem in that commission, and why they will struggle to write a report, is that, in some ways, they cannot resolve the issue. They could probably describe where they would like to be, apart from the constitutional setup but they are constantly stuck on how to get from A to B. For example, on the constitutional question, the Labour Party will say it is not against independence in principle, but Wales must grow the economy so there is near parity with England, and then it could be examined. Plaid Cymru says there is no prospect of growing the economy because Wales does not have the political levers of a sovereign state to get there. The discussion then just ends up in a binary. It is very hard to park those issues because they constantly come back. It is a really good commission. The members put a lot of hard work in and the commission is getting a lot of expertise in from Wales and abroad but I suspect they will struggle to write a final report because the future and the current tend to be interconnected. Climate and environment is probably the single biggest challenge of our time. It is the hardest one for politicians to deal with because no one will see the benefits before or after an election.

Mr. Chris Hazzard

Some people do not mind giving advice.

Professor John Doyle

One must think that the engineering background in Belfast has something to bring to the table. It is a tradition we do not have in the South. Turbines would create well-paid and suitable jobs that would be all-island focused and complementary. There are social issues to be dealt with - God knows we have a housing issue in the South to be radically dealt with - but it is about trying to commit a percentage of a state's income to long-term investments around productive investment, long-term climate change adaptation and public transport. They are hard political choices.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

There are two key long-term, multi-decade challenges. The first is the demographic challenge and the other is climate. On the demographic challenge, which I indicated in my opening statement, the working-age population in Northern Ireland will plateau this decade and then contract. That is a trend consistent across almost all of Europe. Ireland is a little bit of an outlier; the Irish working-age population is forecast to peak beyond 2030, so there is a bit more time from an Irish perspective. The answer lies in a number of elements, one of which is, perhaps, examining increased automation to increase and help productivity. We are all living longer. Should that mean we all need to work longer and thus think about increasing retirement age? Work is also needed on immigration. To go back to the point made previously, particularly about the North, how can we make it a more attractive place for people both from there who have left and people not from there to come and live, invest and work there and all those good things? That is a big, important piece that the world has to address in terms of demographics, but it is a specific issue for us.

The other is also a global issue, around climate, which two previous contributors spoke about. The Climate Change Committee indicated that, on what I think is called a "balanced pathway", will only achieve 83% of net zero by 2050. We must obviously get to 100%. We are not on the balanced pathway yet, but that will only get us to 83%. There is a much more accelerated pathway that requires some very radical changes, for example, in agriculture and what that will mean for that sector. Even that does not take us to 100%. It is about climate, how we address it and, as I said, the need to hit net-zero targets while also investing in the infrastructure we also dearly need. It will be an incredibly challenging trick to pull off.

Professor John FitzGerald

The Northern Ireland energy strategy does not mention offshore wind and Belfast Port. I raised this issue that the Republic is going big on offshore wind, whether we deliver our promised delivery, but there is no port in the Republic that could handle that kind of activity. Belfast is the one port on this island that could. The Republic needs Belfast. This was a big opportunity for Northern Ireland in the energy strategy in Northern Ireland, which I pointed out. The Republic does not want jobs, it just wants somebody to do the work, which Belfast could do. Working together, we might make progress.

An Cathaoirleach

I must let Senator Currie in.

Professor John FitzGerald

The problem is, a really big port is needed. Each offshore wind turbine requires 10,000 tonnes of cement. A railway is needed to deliver the cement; it is complex. They can be serviced but-----

An Cathaoirleach

There is a cement factory in Drogheda, by the way. I must let Senator Currie in.

Senator Emer Currie

I do not think the committee has ever seen me so quiet for so long.

An Cathaoirleach

That is true.

Senator Emer Currie

This is fascinating. I thank the witnesses very much. I am sorry I missed the start of it; I had another engagement. I do not want to keep the witnesses too long.

There is debate about what constitutional change will look like. Much of it is based on the idea of integration and a 32-county model. Some people have noted that, perhaps, we would keep the assembly and other structures in the North but shift sovereignty. Is integration intrinsic to the success of the economic benefits?

Professor John Doyle

I might take this question, given that I am the political scientist in the room. I just finished some work on this matter with regard to the international evidence. I can see the appeal of maintaining devolution, at least transitionally. It looks less dramatic and it would be more reassuring for uncertain voters in Northern Ireland. As Brendan O'Leary has argued strongly, if we want to win 50% plus one and, one hopes, a lot more than that, devolution must be on the table.

The downside is there is not a single example of a two-unit federal system in the 20th century on planet Earth that works. That is because federal models work best when the coalition that might win is different every time. Five or six states might come together and have a point of view on climate change, but a different five or six states will come together on healthcare and everybody wins or loses some of the time. If, in a federal system, one part is wealthier than the other but there are the same social care systems in both parts, it will end up like the Lega Nord in Italy, where there are complaints about bailing out poor people who are not contributing and it becomes politically unpopular for politicians, who need to raise taxes to pay for healthcare that is better in the bit of the island that is not paying its way. You end up with very negative dynamics that get lost in a more unified system. I suspect that if we picked some of the poorer counties in the Republic and counted their tax and public expenditure, they would inevitably be in deficit. We do not collect it that way because it would be politically divisive to do so, but if there were a federal system, we would have to. The alternative is to leave pensions in the North at £75 a week and €220 in Dundalk, but I am not sure about that. I suspect a lot of people would find their granny's address in Dundalk, or that those were not willing to do so would be deeply resentful about that fact.

It is politically reassuring, but on a small island where people sometimes have a flexible attitude to the State and regulation, I do not see how it could work. I can see how it is politically popular to win a referendum but I think that on the morning afterwards, there would be buyer's remorse. Would there be a different corporation tax in Northern Ireland or a different planning regime? Intel, for example, would not like the sound of that. It is politically reassuring, but all the evidence points to two units not being enough. Inevitably, they end up in conflict.

Professor John FitzGerald

That point is important. At the moment, there is huge transfer from the people of Dublin to the people of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. People take that for granted and do not worry about it. If there were a separate executive in the North, it would make utterly transparent a very large transfer, which would lead people in Galway immediately to say they were being screwed for Northern Ireland. That issue of hiding the transfers, to which everybody buys in within a unitary state, would arise.

Professor John Doyle

The other issue is that this will come into play only if at least 50% plus one vote for a united Ireland. Otherwise, we do not need to think about it. If that referendum passes, one would hope by more than one vote, what will the Northern Ireland Executive represent politically? From the perspective of an Ulster unionist, if, by definition, more than 50% plus one have just voted for the party of a united Ireland, the majority would no longer represent a unionist view. If Michelle O'Neill were the First Minister, would Ian Paisley feel represented in Dublin by the First Minister in a future scenario where Northern Ireland has moved on and that is the majority? The Executive's purpose, for me, would not be clear. I can see why it is talked about. In respect of its purpose in the future as representing unionists, however, there are better models that would be more reassuring in terms of the inevitable concerns about rights and representation.

Professor John FitzGerald

However, if we got rid of the Northern Ireland Executive and had a unitary state, we would have to fire 10,000 civil servants in the North, which would not be popular. We would have to roll out the Republic's education system to the North and steamroll everything in the North. Two things we would steamroll from the North to the South would be that the PSNI would take over the Garda - we are already moving in that direction - and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive would take over social housing in the Republic, given that it does a better job.

I do not have the answer to it. It is a real conundrum. I will leave it to political scientists and politicians. We should leave the columnists out of this one.

Mr. Gareth Hetherington

If we assume that what we are talking about is five or ten years down the line at the earliest, there is an argument to make a judgment at that point as to whether devolution works for Northern Ireland. If we were making a decision today, we might reach a different decision from the one we would make in, say, ten years. Ultimately, we want a system that brings about regional convergence. A point was made previously that when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Northern Ireland was at about 80% of the productivity of the UK average, and it is still there. There has been little or no regional convergence between Northern Ireland and UK averages, and that is not unique to the UK or Northern Ireland. Regional convergence is always a lot more complex than national convergence. Ireland is a really good example. It has converged, and then some, over the past 30 or 40 years with EU averages.

For me, the decision would have to consider whether, at the time, a devolved administration would be the best way to deliver regional convergence. We have been on a regional divergence journey for the past ten years that would suggest it is a good way to continue to administer Northern Ireland. If a different set of policies needed to be implemented from Dublin directly as a 32-county state, that would be the way to proceed.

An Cathaoirleach

It has been a remarkably interesting, informative and challenging debate. The witnesses have laid out to us, as a committee and an Oireachtas, the issues we need to think about. Mr. Hazzard's question about the future and looking ahead is important, as was Senator Currie's question. We will need to invite back Professor Doyle and other political scientists regarding how a future state might look, what the options are and whether it makes sense. As he noted, there is nowhere else in the world like the North and South as it stands, so we have to ask what our future together could look like.

Another question concerns what vision we should have. There was a reference to future generations. We have to present a practical vision of what we collectively think as a committee might work, but we have to get buy-in from all the people, not just a majority of one. We have to get people to want it and share it. The witnesses have given us great food for thought. This has been one of the best meetings we have had. We have met previously but we definitely need to meet again. We have a lot to think about and study. I thank the witnesses for their time, ideas and thoughts.

The joint committee adjourned at 4.29 p.m. sine die.