Mr. Aodhán Connolly:

Anything that enables people under the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and the common travel area to continue to have education opportunities North and South is very welcome, not only for the young people who would be involved but also for business as it grows the skills pool on the island.

Corporation tax is the real hot potato. At the time of the referendum and after, there was much discussion about the VAT rate - and there was only 3% difference - and what it would mean between something that was a luxury that was VAT rateable in food and something that was not. That 3% was seen as a significant margin. Were the rate of corporation tax to increase in the way the Chancellor has outlined, the rate in Northern Ireland would be double that in the South. For retail, my sector, corporation tax has been something of a red herring. Many people have looked at it as a panacea whereas we have been concentrating on the taxes we actually have power over in the North, specifically business rates. For every £1 we spend on corporation tax, we spend £2.57 in business rates and we still have not fixed that. However, looking at the protocol opportunities and our having access to both the UK and EU markets, for that to work and for us to have that growth, we will have to attract foreign direct investment. That is more likely to come to somewhere where there is a lower corporation tax. It is problematic, to say the least, that there will be a huge disparity and it undermines some of the possible advantages. How that works out in the longer term will have to be decided by people with greater brains than me but the clock is ticking down and in two years' time, there could be a disparity of double the co-operation tax rate and that will cause problems.