Professor John FitzGerald:

On the FE, HE and IT issue, the Department of Finance summer economic statement published last week was interesting. There is a box, which nobody noticed, on the dramatic drop in the number of people who have done apprenticeships and that there are certain skills which are in very short supply in the Republic. I suspect if you are a plumber or electrician, nobody will care if you qualified in the North because you will be very welcome in the South if you want to come. The problem is that so few want to come.

On the integration on the island, there are some things like education where we have identified today a number of areas in which the qualifications for entry to third level do not work well on the island, in particular, from a North to South direction.

There are things happening in health. It would make sense to have one health system on this island. If you look at the way in which the National Health Service, NHS, operates in Britain, and it operates much better in Britain than it does in Northern Ireland, the minimum population for a deanery is approximately 5 million people and it is organised around a few very big hospitals which are very good. We have far too many hospitals on this island and it should be an all-island provision. As an economist, I was very unhappy with many of Mary Harney’s policies in the Progressive Democrats. She, however, made a major difference to the health of the people of Ireland through integrating the cancer services and concentrating them in a small number of hospitals. A person may be seen much more rapidly in one of the smaller hospitals, but his or her life expectancy will be much better if he or she goes to one of the very big hospitals in Cork or Dublin. A very big political issue both North and South is that we both need to develop a health system around centres of excellence, and the secondary care and so on can be provided more widely. With respect to medical training, young doctors should be exposed to a range of different practices and whatever, and that should be done on an all-island basis. The NHS had a much better training of doctors. We have begun to improve the system in the Republic, but doing it on an all-island basis would help. There are many opportunities to improve there.

Retail has gone backwards. We were part of the United Kingdom retail sector up to Brexit. It has been very costly for the Republic and less costly for Northern Ireland, but it is a problem. There has been disintegration rather than integration there.

There is one area where there is integration but I am concerned it could break up. I was a member of the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation and was one of three people representing Northern Ireland in negotiating with the Republic to set up the all-island electricity market. It delivered on many things. The Republic failed to deliver on the North-South interconnector, which has still not been delivered upon. The obstacle is now in Northern Ireland. I am concerned that market could break up. Northern Ireland does not see a benefit in it and it is possible there could be problems in the future.

There are areas then in retailing and in the energy market where there have been successes in the past but in which we have gone backwards. Much work needs to be done in the energy area to make that work for this island.

On business, there are signs of greater cross-Border co-operation by business with respect to sourcing products and we are seeing an increase in trade. There is probably more progress in the business area but it is broadly in the public sector that I would be concerned.