Mr. Gareth Hetherington:

I thank Dr. Farry. I will let the other guys comment on the sustainability of the Southern surplus.

Financial barriers to education in the North is something Dr. Farry and I talked about in his previous role as Minister for Employment and Learning. It is an area in which some progress has been made but we are not where we need to be when it comes to creating clearer pathways. It is this issue of higher education having a higher status than further education when, in fact, many people who pursue their education in a further education college could quite often do just as well as those who are not well-suited to university but who, because of status reasons, try to pursue degree courses.

There is work to be done to address the status of further education, FE, relative to higher education, HE, or academic relative to professional and technical education. That is one very big point.

Another challenge for the FE sector in the North - this goes to the institutes of technology, IT, point which the guys were making before - is that FE in some respects has such a very broad remit where, in some instances, it is bringing in young people with no qualifications at all and very significant numeracy and literacy problems. On the other end of the scale, they are awarding degrees. That breadth of scope could potentially be narrowed because, between higher education, further education, and the post-primary and secondary school sector, those different parts of the education sector in some respects are eating each other's lunch. Increasingly, we are seeing schools now delivering vocational qualifications, FE colleges are delivering A levels and, in some instances, moving into the degree space, and we are seeing universities increasingly becoming involved in apprenticeships. There is an argument that the wrong institution or type of institution is delivering the wrong type of course. That creates a confusion.

In addition to that, as Dr. Farry will know, that whole skills environment sits under more than one Government Minister. Trying to get co-ordination with respect to the provision of the skills infrastructure in Northern Ireland is, therefore, a real issue and challenge.

On the final point around the flow of students raised by Deputy Conway-Walsh, I have made some comments on this before in that it is not at a level in either direction which it would be expected to be on an island. There is an issue which Northern Ireland has here specifically. Many people talk about the brain drain and the number of young people who go to study in England, Scotland and Wales. Whenever you look at the statistics and compare on a regional basis, the problem is that Northern Ireland does not so much have a brain drain issue - it retains a reasonable number of its young people - but that it has a chronic inflow and is unable to attract either students from Great Britain or from the South to study there. The point that has been made a number of times is that there is a reluctance, partly for social and political reasons but also for economic reasons, on the part of young people, after they have graduated, to come back. Much work needs to be done around creating a social and political environment where young people will want to live and come back. There are also the economic pull factors where we can help to sell Northern Ireland and, in the context of this conversation, to sell the island as a whole.