Mr. Gareth Hetherington:

I am glad I was not asked that question because I do not know the answer either. To be optimistic, there is a much larger, younger and growing cohort of people who do not necessarily identify with one side of the community or another, and many of those who do identify with one side of the community have a much greater recognition of the need and desire to live together and leave the past in the past. The situation is probably a little more positive than we are painting it, but that is not to say that we do not have a significant journey to travel.

I will answer the question on economic inactivity with an anecdote about the Belfast-Dublin train that, for me, underlines the need for significant investment. I had a meeting in Dublin a couple of years ago. I drove to Lanyon Place train station in Belfast and parked my car, but I was running late and just missed the train. I jumped in the car, drove to Newry and got on the same train. That should not have happened. It means there is a problem.

Northern Ireland has the worst rate of economic inactivity across all 12 UK regions. The main issue is long-term sick. There were 100,000 people long-term sick pre Covid. The number is now at approximately 130,000. That level is significantly higher than the rest of the UK. Clearly, Covid has had an impact on the health service. Additionally, people replying to surveys in Northern Ireland are more likely to say they have more severe levels of disability or illness than people in other parts of the UK. A significant health intervention is required in order to bring those numbers back under control or to more manageable levels.

Another economically inactive group where there is potential to bring people back into the labour market is those with caring responsibilities. Their numbers have been falling significantly over the past ten to 15 years.

Among these two groups – long-term sick and those with caring responsibilities – there are approximately 50,000 people who have expressed a desire to get back to work. To put that number in context, there are 22,000 people unemployed. As such, there is a large pool of talent that needs to be tapped. There is an issue with this group in that they typically have lower levels of skills or qualifications. They also have long gaps in their employment histories. Even though many employers have vacancies they cannot fill, many people who have an intention or desire to return to work do not meet the employers’ requirements.

As to how to address this, childcare arrangements and making childcare more affordable are measures that could be taken in respect of people with caring responsibilities. That would be expensive to do across the economy as a whole.

If we want to encourage people with childcare responsibilities at least back into training, there is no reason we could not or should not have free childcare in further education colleges and higher education institutions. I believe that is certainly a lower cost way to try to tackle the problem. There is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done. We had what were called labour market partnerships, which were operated on a local council basis. They provided more wraparound care for economically inactive people, to try to move them closer to the labour market again. Unfortunately, in the most recent budget, funding for those labour market partnerships was severely cut. That is one of the areas I would try to address to help increase the skills and work readiness of a lot of those people.