Dr. Alan Barrett:

Tons of it. Dr. McGuinness and Dr. Bergin are being quite modest in their responses. I will be slightly less modest on their behalf. Prior to the existence of the shared island unit, one of the reasons Dr. McGuinness and Dr. Bergin got involved in this area of work was because of the discussion around the subvention. To a great extent, that became a dominant issue and a mini-industry grew up of people asking was the subvention in the amount of £13 billion or zero. All those sorts of things were being discussed. In fairness to Dr. McGuinness and Dr. Bergin, one of the reasons they did the work in the way they did was to ask why Northern Ireland needs such an enormous subvention. The argument put to me by Dr. McGuinness was to suggest that part of planning for any reunification, or the potential of it, should be to ensure that the Northern Ireland economy is brought up to such a level that the subvention is almost removed from the discussion. Dr. McGuinness will remember making the argument to me a number of years ago that on the assumption that this is not going to happen within, for example, the next ten years, if we could make a concerted effort to improve the economic situation of Northern Ireland, we could make a substantial dent in the subvention. Much of the work on things such as productivity, education and everything else is not just about learning, it is about developing insights into the policies that are needed. No matter what happens, the potential for the Republic to cope in the event of reunification would be vastly enhanced by a successful economy in Northern Ireland.