Professor John Doyle:

Yes. If one does not bother to look to vote for a unionist party then one is probably not that concerned about it.

I shall outline of the exercises that we ran. A very senior civil servant in a very relaxed closed-doors event was asked, if a person's worst fears happened and a united Ireland is voted for and the vote is lost, what would the Irish State promise you and he said, "to keep my British passport", which is a right that is already guaranteed in the Good Friday Agreement. So a debate on what would be done by the Irish State is very far back in the pipeline in terms of what we need to list. An Oireachtas committee could play a valuable role in that.

Fourth, one could draft a Scottish-style prospectus of what the Irish State would put on the table. Realistically, a debate with political unionism will not take place until after a referendum. A debate with civic unionism can take place right now so it will not be absolutely bereft of information on what people's concerns are. So that would include healthcare, minority rights, which Professor Dickson talked about on the economy, and what we will propose to bring to the table for those post referendum. I think that Scottish-style prospectus would be a really valuable role. It would take some time but it would reflect the political view, not just the evidence to go into it but also the consensus, as much as possible, throughout the Oireachtas.

Fifth, the Oireachtas committee could identify the levelling up issues comparing North and South and also better places that may be better than either North or South. The late Dr. Vicky Conway was mentioned here and she was a colleague of mine in DCU. Her very last academic paper was for ARINS, which pointed out that the police oversight in the North was actually stronger than the oversight of An Garda Síochána.

While we have many examples where things are worse in the North in terms of education, it is not all in one direction. There are many examples where that would vary. There is a job of work that would take some years that only an Oireachtas committee can do, with the authority that it would bring which a group of citizens otherwise convened simply would not.

Finally, in response to a couple of questions on a stimulus package, it would be likely to take place as the EU would want to be perceived to be involved. Ultimately, however big the cheque would be, the transformative effects, about which our colleagues, in particular those from the ESRI, talked, are likely to be more important than the billions of euro the EU might provide over a number of years. For example, foreign direct investment, FDI, in the North is at best 20% of the level in the South. Why is it that Belfast is so much weaker than Cork, Limerick or Galway? One is not only comparing it with Dublin. Why is the North so much weaker, even than places that would not be perceived to be hotbeds of FDI? Why do so few people who come to the island of Ireland on a holiday go North for any longer than a day trip? The bed nights for tourism are one seventh of what they are in the South on a pro ratabasis. This is the broader economic picture. If FDI in the North was approximate to even the southern region in Ireland, that would be transformative. This is where we get to the chicken and egg in terms of the question asked of colleagues here. We know skills and education are related to FDI but we are probably not as certain about which is the chicken and which is the egg in the sense that a culture of FDI would certainly encourage investment in higher education and bring more skills there.

We are in the early stages of a project with Ulster University but what we are hearing back from FDI decision-makers is that they are not that certain whether they know very much about the Northern Ireland skills deficit because their thinking never even gets that far. It is the political image, Brexit, the protocol and the legacy of the conflict. For decision-makers, the political certainty issue around Northern Ireland is probably as big a barrier as the skills and education deficits that are there. That is something that would change, obviously, relatively quickly, in a united Ireland.

On the 25 years, some reports talk about transforming education, but it might not be quite that long. Stimulus is more than a cheque. It is the broader package that would bring the Northern economy from where it is now to where it would need to be to not only pay its own way but to improve people's lifestyles and standards of living.