Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What Mr. Bruton is saying bears out in terms of the brain drain from the North with people studying in Britain rather than on an all-island basis. The ESRI report by Adele Bergin and Seamus McGuinness, that was published last week as part of the shared island initiative cited the impact the brain drain has on productivity in the North, as well as the disparities there.

Regarding the subvention, the figure that has been quoted is €10 billion. The actual headline figure is €9.4 billion. This does a disservice to the debate in a sense when we look at the taxation. It is easy to quantify the income tax, domestic rates, etc., by individuals in the North but it is not so easy to measure the taxation of businesses such as corporation tax, capital gains tax and VAT because many companies operating in the North have their headquarters in England and, in particular, in London. Taking the figures crudely like that does a disservice. When looking at the identifiable expenditure, such as €1.4 billion for UK defence that would not form part of expenditure, the Trident nuclear weapons programme and the diplomatic services, the most interesting figure probably is the €3.438 billion for pensions. As Mr. Bruton will be aware, there must be 100,000 English people living quite happily in the South, but many of them have pensions from England and that would remain the same in the North in the event of Irish unity. I do not know if he has looked at the subvention or at the economics around it.

I also raise some of the academic reports that were done. I should acknowledge that the report that I quoted about the figures is by Professor John Doyle from DCU. There are many academic reports. That is why the people and academia are ahead of the Government in the sense of preparation and examination. We spoke about the figures of 15% plus one earlier on when we spoke about the referendum. A huge study has been done by the London School of Economics on that as well. There is, therefore, a lot of time and resources being put into it, not least by the shared island unit in terms of the research that it is doing. All of those things are helping. Even the other day a report was launched in Buswells Hotel by the grassroots women’s organisation and a number of women who had worked with Ulster University, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many others.

They produced a report addressing the constitutional question and how it would impact on women, including at grassroots level. Will Mr. Bruton comment on those reports? Is there an indication that the volume of preparation being done outside the political system may not always be recognised collectively?