Ms Aingeal O?Donoghue:

For us, this is as much about us hearing from the members as it is about them hearing from me. There was a lot of really valuable food for thought there from a whole range of people who have come in so far. I just wanted to say that. We will be very careful in taking away all the points that have been made here.

Ms Hanna mentioned synchronising the two economies and the Brexit piece. On Brexit, some things we know already. Even with a deal we know that Great Britain is outside the Single Market and the customs union and that Northern Ireland will operate under the terms of the protocol. However, there is a whole range in there still, including depending on whether we have a deal or not, so that is kind of an unknown. Certainly looking under the hood of the all-island economy, to put it that way, is something we really want to do and that will form a major part of our work, especially where research is concerned. It is also about making that real so it is around the supply chains, how will those be affected and in what ways will they change. Mr. Farry raised the services economy not being part of the protocol, which is exclusively about goods. As such, what Ms Hanna, more elegantly than me, called the synchronisation and recalibration of the two economies, that kind of looking under the hood is a key part of what we need to do to build a pipeline for the future, which is what a lot of this is about. On the research, which Ms Hanna mentioned and I think Mr. Duffy did as well, it will be about the research but about publishing our research so that that it will be available to everyone to inform ongoing debate and development.

On the mapping exercise, again, some of this is about knowing where we end up on the final Brexit outcomes. There is no doubt about this, we all know it and it was the basis of the mapping exercise, that there are aspects of North-South co-operation that will become more challenging without a shared underpinning of a shared EU regulatory system.

That is what the mapping exercise did. As part of every North-South Ministerial Council meeting, there is a standing item around that sectoral area and Brexit, which is one of the ways we assess it. Into the future, those areas of North-South co-operation that are most impacted by Brexit and how we can put different scaffolding around them - I do not refer to institutional issues but rather what happens in respect of differing regulation and so on - will be an important part of our work.

There was a point on the national planning framework and other economic plans such as the national economic plan which was published this autumn. Part of what we will do is mainstreaming much of this into the strategic planning that the Irish Government is taking forward. We will want to see more North-South, all-island issues appearing in those documents.