Mr. Paul Hogan:

The Chairman has raised a couple of very good questions. One is on growth being employment led, or jobs led or infrastructure led. On infrastructure led development alone, the ESRI, with which we are working, did a study recently on firm location in the country and what drives it, whether it can be influenced by infrastructure. It found that human capital is more influential than infrastructure. Increasingly because of the nature of work and jobs they want very highly qualified people, people with the leaving certificate at least, if not a third level qualification. That militates against some of the declining communities where people may not have had the opportunity to avail of education so lifelong learning and retraining is critical to people participating in that sort of economy, as well as adding to the prospects of regions.

Another issue we have gleaned from our consultation, and we have learned as we went along, is that people choose where they want to live first, rather than where they want to work. People will always have a place that they want to live. It is not that they really want to work in a certain place. They will obviously move for work, that is what drives migration, but the preference will always -----