Mr. Paul Gosling:

I thank the committee for its forbearance.

I start as someone who is committed to Irish unity because of the dysfunctionality at this moment in time of the Northern state. The committee will be aware that the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive are not functioning.

There is no First Minister or deputy First Minister. This is a not a one-off; this is a consistent problem the North has. As we already heard, the North underperforms in a number of other ways even when we have a functioning system. We underperform on health compared with England. We underperform on skills and jobs. We also underperform on reconciliation in terms of where we need to be. We have a functioning problem with dysfunctionality. The problem we have is so ingrained in Stormont that I would suggest the idea of retaining Stormont after unity is a bad one because it is cementing in partition and the existing dysfunctionality of the problems we have within the northern state. I would suggest that we cannot continue with Stormont after unity.

Equally, the North cannot be bolted on to the South, and I think we have already heard that much more eloquently than I can say. The South is, though, much more competent than the North, although it has, dare I say, clear problems. We all know the problems about housing and health. Those of us who live in the north west know that many people in County Donegal feel disconnected from Dublin.

We can perhaps ask whether these are issues that will be made worse or that can be addressed more easily through Irish unity. I would hope that with a new focus on regional policy, for example, the creation of a united Ireland will actually increase the focus on regional policy.

Clearly, the advantage for the North is in terms of having a skills and labour market policy that is much closer to that of the South. That will assist with problems the South has with the overheating, for example, of Dublin. Therefore, if we combine the fact that we could have more effective regional policy along with the reforms to the labour market and the focus on skills, I would hope we would then have a spill-off of economic benefit from Irish unity to the South. Clearly, it will assist with the overheating of places like Dublin, which actually goes beyond that.

I have a couple of words before I finish. We have already heard much about the subvention, and I fully endorse the comments made. We do not know the size of the real subvention but it is much less than the figure of €11 billion that is often mentioned. It comes down to the need to negotiate. The question then is how to negotiate and whether there is negotiation between two parties with generosity and friendship at their hearts. That in a sense is one of the big challenges given the current environment we have. That is why, despite Professor O'Leary's comments earlier, I am not entirely convinced that a one-off referendum is the right solution. There have been suggestions that perhaps the solution or the better approach is a two-stage referendum by which we have a referendum, in principle, then the negotiations and then a sign-off of the negotiated solution. My concern would be that a one-off referendum would actually undermine the ability of both states to negotiate on a fairer basis.