Dr. Seamus McGuinness:

We have done that on productivity. The productivity gap is approximately 40%. If we take the Northern Ireland education system and the Northern Ireland level of investment and plug it into the Irish model, predicted productivity in Ireland falls by 40%. We can explain all the gaps in productivity between the North and the South because of differences in education and skills and the level of investment. The problem is that if we took the Irish system's educational level and investment and plugged it into the Northern Ireland model, we would get something but that model does not work. While we can say what would happen to the Republic's productivity if education and investment levels fell to the North's level, our model is telling us that if education and skills levels increased in the North to the Republic's level, there is no guarantee that productivity would increase because that causal relationship is not there in the models for the North that we see in the South. That is the problem. There has to be a fundamentally different approach to competitiveness, industrial policy and economic policy. It needs to be more integrated because if the levers of investment or education are just hit on their own, there is no guarantee that anything will improve. There needs to be a different approach to policymaking because of that lack of the causal relationships that we take for granted for any other country. The fact we do not see them for the North is telling us that is very-----