Dr. Seamus McGuinness:

We make this point in another of our papers that it is only really an estimate. Nobody knows exactly the true figure is for this because of smoke and mirrors around things like corporation tax. Professor Mike Tomlinson did a quick analysis of this. When the Irish tax code is applied to the North tax receipts would increase by 11% through higher taxation of higher income employees and employers of the low paid, so it is a movable figure. It is therefore a movable figure.

Regarding reunification, the subvention is not of a scale that could be considered a major barrier any more. It is more important as a signal for where policy needs to operate, if any transition to unity is to work in the interest of everybody, both economically and socially. We have an underperforming economy in the North and the focus really should be on fixing that situation for people there now and in the future so that the subvention is not an irrelevance. If we imagine there had not been a 30% fall in productivity over the last 20 years, where would the situation be in terms of that number? We really need to focus on stopping that decline in relative productivity and living standards. That is the way to address the issue. We do not want a subvention in any scenario of Irish unity. Subvention is a measure of economic failure and any process we implement should be focused on eradicating that failure and moving forward so it simply becomes a non-issue.