Professor John FitzGerald:

I would not fly from Derry to Dublin; I would just improve the road. I have since gone to Derry from Dublin twice by train in the past year but it does take a long time, whereas going by bus also takes a long time. When I am lecturing at Atlantic Technological University, formerly GMIT, in Galway, I will take the bus because it is the fastest way to get there. It is actually faster than the train.

On the issue of education, there is one thing. When Peter Hain was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, he spoke at the MacGill Summer School in Donegal. He spoke about the issue the Deputy raised of integration of Catholics and Protestants, rather than of secondary and grammar schools. He said there would be very substantial savings in education by amalgamating the schools. It is something we did in the Republic in the 1970s and the early 1980s, although I have forgotten the name of the Fianna Fáil Minister involved. However, there would be substantial savings. However, Vani Borooah and Colin Knox say that, actually, much more important than the Catholic-Protestant divide is to close the secondary-grammar divide and amalgamate them. Instead of having four schools in a town in Northern Ireland, they should have one school. This would save money and provide much better education.

The issue of migration is interesting. There is the homing pigeon effect. In the late 1980s, Gay Byrne used to drive me mad on his programme where he would say to kids that they might as well emigrate because there is no future in this country. It really infuriated me, because even then, we said that there was a future. It turned out that most of them came back. The research that was done by the ESRI shows that people emigrate and they come back, although we control for the fact that they may be more adventurous and whatever. They earn 10% more and they add very substantially to productivity. Therefore, it is the returned emigrants who are important. I do not know how many of the politicians present are returned emigrants but there are quite a number, such as the Ministers, Deputies Coveney and Donohoe-----