Dr. Tom McDonnell:

As for whether a social partnership model would help and assist with that, it is certainly helpful to have many voices from civil society engaging in that debate. That includes, obviously, trade unions, employers - but also people from the green movement, farmers and people from the community and voluntary sector. We have the national economic dialogue, but that is a once-off set-piece event whereas we could have a process of looking at budget strategy over three years, five years or ten years and let us have a national conversation about this in a safe space where people are not shouting at each other.