Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. It has been an interesting debate. The longer the presentation went on, the more I was sitting back here and the clearer it became that to make this constitutional change happen is a much bigger task than any of us realise. This will particularly be the case if matters are not resolved regarding the political baggage in Northern Ireland. It is a pretty much impossible situation. We sometimes feel we are sitting here in an asylum talking to ourselves. That said, the work being done by the witnesses is vitally important. It is important that these issues are spelt out in clear terms to people in Northern Ireland. I refer to the state of its economy.

I say this because I do not think it is generally realised. I have sat with unionist politicians and spoken to them about their education system. This was in the context of a general conversation about education and how things stood in this regard. I told them that I believe, as a republican politician, that we have more to offer unionists than anybody else. I firmly believe that. The response was that we do not have any universities in the top 100 in the world. I was making the point that there is no reason for unionist families to send their kids off to the UK for an education and, by extension, a life. The varied Irish model is a good one.

There is much more for people in Northern Ireland than just the UK. We need to be looking more at the all-Ireland economy. Regarding the comment made to me that none of our universities was ranked in the top 100, I answered that this might be the case but that our graduates are getting better outcomes. They may be coming out with lesser degrees but their outcomes and pay packets are in excess of those kids coming out of the top universities in the UK. We need models to show what a Northern Ireland economy could be like if we were to come together on this island to make it all work. It would be very useful all around to be able to create more models to show what can be done for the next generations and what we can achieve and attain.