Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I will start and ask Mr. D'Arcy to come in on some of these as well, especially how we envisage the future evolution of the framework. Given the comments from the Chair and the way the Deputy rightly positioned this, when it comes to the economic significance of the agreement, there are many factors due to the success of the Celtic tiger but the agreement has never got full recognition as one of these key factors that saw the unprecedented levels of prosperity over the last two decades, though with some interruptions, obviously. For the 25th anniversary, we see the role of business as being to tell this story of the economy and what it meant for investment, employment and all the other factors we mentioned.

I might work backwards through the Deputy's questions. On the educational piece, we were noticing before Covid something that has become much more evident since, namely, the degree to which the all-island labour market is now functioning as a single labour market. That is much more pronounced than in the past. We note in our report we now have a labour force on the island of 3.6 million, so it has got real scale. Whether an indigenous company or a global one is coming to establish operations in Europe or on this island, it is looking at the opportunity of the 3.6 million and the nature and diversity of skills it can get in that labour force. In this new world of work, distance from your employer does not matter. Having those skills on the island and having reasonable access through good public transport - which we will come to - is important. It has really opened up the all-island labour market. That is going to become much more of a phenomenon in terms of ensuring we have an all-Ireland labour market that works seamlessly in all its facets, that is, through an education system, through skilling and upskilling and then through the regulatory framework, especially around social welfare and tax. We have a lot of concerns that we are not doing enough to get the most and and the optimum out of that all-island labour market.

To the Deputy's specific point on education, where we have students choosing to pursue education outside or away from the island, there is less probability of them returning to bring those skills and that education back to the all-island economy. We definitely see that as a challenge. Then we can see that in both jurisdictions we have various pinch-points, blockages and shortages of capacity whereby students are, in many cases, almost being forced to leave the island to pursue their educational opportunities. This means there is less opportunity to bring those back into our workforce. That could be in heatlh, and I was recently listening to the story of veterinary students who are in such large numbers going to eastern Europe from Ireland.