Professor David Phinnemore:

My understanding is that only if a person is born in the Northern part of this island can they get Irish citizenship through Northern Ireland. Naturalisation rules do not apply to people resident in Northern Ireland, one has to be resident in the Republic for naturalisation purposes.

I will come back to some of the other issues. I refer to the common travel area. One of the many things Brexit has caused us to reflect on is what the common travel area is. It is possibly less common than we thought. There is quite a discrepancy at times between what people think it is and what it actually is, partly because the rights which people assume they may have under the common travel area may actually be rights which derive from EU membership, it is just that they have become conflated over time. In one respect Brexit provides us an opportunity to bring some clarity to the content of the common travel area and to put it on a sounder legal footing. The phrase "gentleman's agreement" was used, because it is a mix of agreements, understandings, conventions and practices, which we could do with codifying. Added to that there are some issues in there which we probably think are covered but are not. I will give one example which we see from a university perspective. If we are bringing students to a summer school from the United States or China, they cannot enter Northern Ireland through Dublin, they have to go through London. They cannot get off the plane in Dublin and travel North because an Irish visa is needed to be able to do that. We could make it a genuine common travel area through greater co-ordination between Britain and Ireland. There are other dimensions as well which could be addressed.

An interesting question was raised on the potential impact of Brexit on academics, students and universities and what opportunities we may have to address some of those. It is fair to say that there are concerns as to what this will mean to the institutions in Northern Ireland for participation in initiatives like ERASMUS+ and future framework programmes for research. There are also questions about mutual recognition of diplomas and qualifications, all of which have been raised in various fora. I would encourage people to think about how we might exploit this language of flexible and imaginative solutions and exploit the existence of the Good Friday Agreement. For the purposes of ERASMUS, which is pretty uncontentious, if the UK Government were not to support UK participation, could we treat the institutions or students at institutions in the North as Irish for the purposes of ERASMUS in order that all of the institutions on the island participate? Bearing in mind the emphasis that is placed on the economic prosperity of Northern Ireland for the future of the peace process, which is British Government language, could we contemplate allowing the institutions and researchers based in Northern Ireland to participate in Horizon 2020 as though they were at an Irish institution? All of the institutions on the island could become eligible. It may be that the British Government secures an arrangement where all the institutions in the UK can participate but if it does not, can we do something which is slightly different for the institutions in Northern Ireland in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement to ensure they can participate fully, just as other institutions on the island can?