Dr. Stephen Farry:

I wish all our witnesses a good afternoon. I will make a few comments first before I ask a few questions in a moment. This is reflecting largely from a Northern perspective and also as someone who was previously Minister for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland many years ago.

We are very conscious of the structural problems that exist in Northern Ireland at present, including, in particular, the productivity challenge and, as a subset of that, the educational skills issues that are key in that regard. I also acknowledge the change in life expectancy on the island and how that has flipped in terms of performance over the past 20 years.

There is a growing divergence in terms of economic and financial performance on the island. It is perhaps a slightly different issue than the level of integration on a socioeconomic level. We are currently going through, obviously, a governance gap without an executive and assembly, which is seriously hampering our ability to keep up and put in place new policy and investments. There is also a budget crisis whereby there is now a defunding of skills and other economic drivers which, again, is seriously hindering our ability to keep up. We look with considerable envy at the very large budget surplus that now exists in Dublin by comparison.

From a parity point of view, we are open-minded on the issue of the future political constitutional arrangement on the island. We are happy to engage in discussions on a without prejudice basis. However, I would make the point that it is possible to envisage a new economic model for Northern Ireland, including good North-South all-island co-operation, without constitutional and political change. It is important to make that point clear. There may well be arguments for that change but there is still space for economic transformation without that level of change actually happening.

Professor Fitzgerald responded to one of the points I wanted to make regarding the implications of Northern Ireland actually rejoining the European Union as part of a united Ireland in terms of what would happen with east-west trade. There is no need to go back on that point. As I said, however, it is something I am very conscious of in that while it is important that we have borders on the island and that there are more movements on a daily basis on the island, there is still a greater level of economic integration by value on an east-west basis than North-South. That will take time to change.

In terms of a few questions, to what extent does the panel think the current surplus that has been run up in Dublin is actually going to be sustainable into the future? Is that a momentary situation or is that something that is likely to persist in the medium and long term?

When we look at education and think about how things could be integrated in the future, what consideration should we give to non-financial barriers to change? What I mean, particularly in education, is that we have seen radically different systems emerge over the past number of decades regarding what people do in terms of qualifications and even how we grade skills on the skills ladder. The system we use in Northern Ireland is different from that used in the South. It is about how those sorts of barriers can be overcome or how we can find a third or unified way forward in those particular regards.

The witnesses might give an idea of what they assess the current level of integration economically to be on the island and how much further that can actually go. My reading is that while we have seen changes happening over the past couple of decades, it is still relatively low. Again, if we look at something like education, on a tertiary level, there is much more of a flow of Northern Ireland students to Great Britain than there is to the South. Virtually no one in Northern Ireland goes southwards in terms of further education. There is a further education flow, particularly from County Donegal, into the North West Regional College in County Derry and some into other Northern universities. Overall, however, those flows in both directions are substantially below perhaps where people would expect those to be. To what extent is the current non-recognition of qualifications a potential barrier? Those are a few thoughts in terms of looking to the future. I am happy for people to respond to those in turn. I will maybe start with Mr. Hetherington in terms of Northern solidarity and then go to the two Johns.