Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 11 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

The Economics of Northern Ireland and the All-island Economy: Economic and Social Research Institute

Dr. Alan Barrett:

I do not know about the relative merits of David Gavaghan's suggestion regarding trains because I am not qualified to talk about it. It is interesting, however, particularly if you project forward and start thinking about a possible united Ireland. If you start thinking about it in that longer term way, it brings up a whole set of environmental and other considerations. Let us not just think about how we currently organise ourselves and how we are going to shove the two bits together. We need to reimagine how we treat a whole load of things. We have touched on health, transport and rural development. We are reimagining a new island of Ireland, which has a constitutional change. It maybe also has a broader change about our relationship with the environment, well-being as a policy indicator and those sorts of things. Deputy Conway-Walsh spoke about frameworks around these. We can be tremendously imaginative. I do not know about the hourly train service, but I love hearing about those creative and imaginative initiatives. It would be lovely to see more of them.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.