Dr. Alan Barrett:

I will do the best I can on the Windsor Framework question. I am drawing on the work of colleagues, rather than my own. What ESRI work has shown is that access to and being in the EU really matters for FDI. Colleagues have done work where they have tried to look at the inflow of foreign direct investment in countries and regions and subsequently tried to link this to taxation, language spoken, legal frameworks and all these sorts of things. In that context, being in the EU really matters in terms of FDI. To the extent then, under the Windsor Framework, that Northern Ireland, at least for the purposes of trade in goods, is still, essentially, in the EU, this situation should be very positive for investment coming into Northern Ireland.

Strangely too, there could be an additional benefit for Northern Ireland due to the fact that Great Britain is outside the EU. One can imagine when all of the United Kingdom was in the European Union, a foreign direct investment entity would have looked at the entirety of the UK to decide, if it wanted to locate in the European Union, where in the UK it would locate. One could potentially have a diversion effect now with the firms that had heretofore considered locating in the UK maybe deciding to go to the bit of the UK that is still in the European Union. There are positives there and, over time, subject to some of the points we made earlier on having a more rational economic policy and framework, that potential is quite significant and could make a difference. One of the points we always try to emphasise is that in and of itself Brexit is not going to make a difference and that all these other sorts of investments are needed to make the whole thing happen.

The only question mark I will put at the end of all that, and I am again on the edges of my expertise here, is the extent to which the Stormont brake and arrangements within the framework throw up any doubt around the possible ongoing operation of this. That is the sort of thing which works against foreign direct investment because nobody wants to invest and then discover subsequently that if there is a divergence between the EU and UK legislation and Stormont is operating in particular ways to align in various ways, that could be a problem. Generally, it should be positive, however.