Mr. Michael D'Arcy:

As the Deputy knows well, this is a challenge. If I may assert a limited level of knowledge, learned a long time ago when studying political science at University College Dublin, UCD, it is very hard to get away from economics in the North being political. With the UK outside the European Union and the nature of the UK constitution, every item of legislation is constitutional and a lot of legislation affects business and investment. Political unionism has engaged with that idea in a very narrow framework in terms of GB-NI trade. They are aware in private of the deeper background of the wider interests of the business community, of whom there are people from the unionist background. It is unfortunate it has taken so long to resolve the GB-NI dimension but it is all there now in the Windsor Framework and over the next while, we hope, space will be available to move into that broader discussion where real choices have to be made in policy terms if Northern Ireland is to have the best of both worlds, which is possible but requires engagement with politics and political issues in a way that perhaps did not always happen in discussions on the all-island economy in the past.

I often think, as Mr. O'Brien will know given he gets a bit of it, that we are too quick to put the spotlight onto the North rather than onto our ourselves, with a view to finding out what it is possible to do here. As he said, the NDP is a very good example of this. I recall a few years ago being invited into the Department of the Taoiseach, when a previous NDP was being developed, to explain what the all-island economy was before people understood it fully and how much potential was there, because we did not count it back then. Now people understand the scope and scale of it because it is counted. As for how we move it forward from here, I am trying to be rigorous in connecting this back. A number of the areas of co-operation, as set out in the second strand, are interwoven with the future of the all-island economy. In a broader context of policy, as distinct from what certain companies do from a production-floor level up, agriculture and agrifood are clearly the future of the all-island economy and a fundamental pillar of it. An awful lot of decisions taken in regard to policy, governance and regulation relate to it. We know about the aspects of veterinary science and climate change. Look at Lough Neagh at the moment. Suddenly the spotlight is coming onto farming and farming practices that had never been questioned.

I wonder about this myself. Was Waterways Ireland not meant to be somewhat in charge of waterways? Does it have a role here or not? Look at the question of education. The ESRI has carried out so much research highlighting the North-South differentials and so on but where is the action going to be to join them up to serve the all-island labour market, which is ultimately what that is about, in both the public and private sector sense? I look at transport. I think I recall Mr. Hazzard, when he was a Minister in the Executive, giving a presentation about a previous report we had produced on waterways and he was very enthusiastic about it. He engaged at the time on the whole question of financing, but the focus has now turned to transport and rail. Roads still matter, especially in the north west, but rail matters too, so that is double the money. At a time of the stringency of the Executive budget and the challenges there, where is that money going to come from? There needs to be a bit of creativity. How is that going to be done on a joined-up basis? Who is going to manage a truly joined-up North-South project? The environment is next and I touched on the issue of climate change. I am just illustrating the connectivity that is needed. We can bring the committee a lot of information and knowledge from the firm and factory-floor level and I will be happy to engage in that, but it is important for the committee to ask where this is connected to the implementation of the agreement in the context of the next 25 years of the second strand and its operation.

The final case study is the Northern and Western Regional Assembly's report, which I have just flicked through. Again, there is mention of the Border but no mention of cross Border. The agency feels so constrained by its legislative remit relating just to this jurisdiction that there does not seem to be any freedom of thinking. Committee members will know how important that cross-Border dimension is to the development of the region and the greater north west. I am going to Derry next week to talk about this at the John and Pat Hume Foundation conference. You cannot talk about development on either side of the Border, in an optimal way, unless it is joined up. It is about trying to push the conversation into that more dynamic phase, just thinking about the future. That is somewhere this committee could play an important role.