Professor John FitzGerald:

I am reluctant to prescribe new institutions. When considering institutional change, we should look to the HSE or look to the movement of responsibility for climate change from the Custom House to Adelaide Road. I am reluctant to go down that route. While we would all like to see institutions across the Border, I will leave it to the politicians to solve that one.

Third level institutions, which are not part of the Government on either side, actually work together. I am on the board of the energy institute in UCD. There is a major research programme on energy, the transmission system and so on in UCD which includes Queens University. Universities without making too much publicity actually work together. It is trying to get more integration.

For me the important area is the north west, particularly Derry. There was the failure to put a university in Coleraine in the 1960s, to build it up and to create synergy between that and Letterkenny IT. It requires an investment in infrastructure, connecting Derry to the rest of the country. It is easier to work together below Government level to find synergies and there are many synergies to be had.