Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I will make some initial observations on the key barriers we see and then perhaps ask Mr. D'Arcy to join the conversation. The Senator probably touched on them on her contribution. I will go back to the labour market and the pace with which the world of work is changing. We definitely have regulatory barriers on the island of Ireland that do not support that kind of all-island labour market to be as dynamic as it can. There are some practical things that are absolutely within the power of Government in Dublin to address immediately.

In particular, we would look at those kinds of tax and social welfare systems to see how we can bring greater alignment. It is a complication for businesses that are trying to have a single team on the island of Ireland in terms of their workforce. It probably a factor of Brexit that we have seen more organisations restructure their operations to an all-island operation since Brexit. Clearly, with the regulatory regime we are going to have for the all-island economy, that makes sense and some companies have chosen to do that. It makes it then more difficult to manage their workforce across the island.

There is definitely more we can do to support businesses that have that all-island workforce and support that mobility of labour across the island. That feeds into some of the earlier conversations we were having around education and having various educational centres of excellence on the island of Ireland and high levels of co-operation, in particular within our third-level and fourth-level education systems and on a research basis. Some good initiatives are happening but it is something businesses would very much point out as an opportunity for further co-operation.

Infrastructure remains a challenge, absolutely. We speak about the single electricity market being a wonderful success of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and we continuously highlight that. We now have a climate challenge that we will have to address on an all-island basis. It makes perfect sense that we would be addressing that on an all-island basis. There are so many sub-elements of environment and climate. A very tangible example at the moment would be the deposit refund scheme for recycling. Not having a unified system for deposit refund on the island of Ireland is going to cause many challenges for businesses that already have either all-island retail or distribution or wholesale structures in the drinks industry. It is a very tangible element.

The broader infrastructure in terms of energy communications, transport for people, road transport can clearly be much more effective to support those supply chains across the island. Again, however, we would identify that in addition to that restructuring we have seen in many companies since Brexit, reshoring is definitely a phenomenon in terms of companies looking at their global international supply chains and bringing more resilience into their supply chains. For many of them, shortening supply chain distances and securing suppliers on the island of Ireland has become very attractive. Supporting the practical issues of infrastructure is something all members would identify as a barrier.

Mr. D'Arcy might make some more observations.