Professor John FitzGerald:

In the Republic investment is paid for out of taxation. Borrowing is not the solution. Northern Ireland has more money per head than any other UK region.

It is a question of reprioritising investment. As we know in the Republic, it is exceptionally painful. One area Northern Ireland has invested in far more than anywhere else in the UK is housing; it is twice the investment. That is one reason housing is cheap in Northern Ireland. We in the Republic have invested too little but Northern Ireland is a bit like the Ireland of the 1950s. We borrowed a huge amount - I will not go into the history of it - but it was a disaster. We spent it on social housing when the population was falling, instead of developing infrastructure. It was very bad; there were empty social houses. Some productive infrastructure needs to be invested in long term. Northern Ireland must invest in roads, energy and the environment. Looking across the developed world, we need to invest a lot in the environmental area such as retrofitting houses. That will require significant state investment. Repurposing some current expenditure on housing for retrofitting will be important. There is no pipeline of energy infrastructure, such as windmills, coming along in Northern Ireland. That would be provided by the private sector but the wires to make it work are important. They will not be a charge on public expenditure, but on electricity consumers. Regarding transport infrastructure, I am less keen on high-speed trains. I like the idea of a train that connects Dublin to Belfast in an hour, but the constraint is that it could be done in an hour if we got rid of the DART in the Republic. The problem is the-----