Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

In those areas, of infrastructure and innovation, there is scope for the Irish Government to play a role. There has been an ongoing plan in some of the infrastructure projects where I would not necessarily agree with the particular prioritisation but greater connectivity in infrastructure is something that we could do. If one looks at Northern Ireland, and I have been living in Ireland for a very long time, back in the 1980s one always had this view that the roads got better as one crossed the Border. Now it is the other way around. Infrastructure in Northern Ireland has been lagging behind and the data supports that. The infrastructure investment has not been as strong.

On innovation, tying Northern Ireland into the wider innovation system on the island of Ireland and, with that, into Europe is something that we want to continue to foster.

It is quite interesting to look at some of the previous schemes before Brexit, which the EU had been running, such as the Horizon 2020, H 2020, and its predecessor funding. Many of the Irish universities worked with UK universities but not with Northern Irish ones. Building collaborations North-South is something upon which we can do much more on the innovation side. There is scope for that. Those things will help in driving productivity and can have wider benefits in that we can connect the two parts of the Ireland.