Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will share my time with my colleague, Senator Blaney. I welcome our witnesses. We have often spoken to witnesses who come before this committee about the development of the all-Ireland economy since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. That is very evident to those of us who represent Border constituencies and there are quite a number of us on this committee. We are very conscious of the very welcome development of the all-Ireland economy. It is a seamless development that has been happening since 1998, not on foot of any economic model that was put in place but rather through practical business leadership and enterprise and general Government policies that facilitated enterprise and development, and we welcome that. I represent Cavan and Monaghan, the central Border area. As the all-Ireland economy develops and as we possibly see constitutional change on this island in the future, I do not want the Dublin-Belfast corridor to dominate. In the central Border area we do not have big centres of population. Senator Blaney's constituency in Donegal has Letterkenny. Derry has a good population axis with Strabane as well, but the central Border area comprising Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh and Tyrone does not have that. I would like to see us thinking about, at academic and research level, how we ensure regional disparities do not arise in the future. Thankfully, we have good enterprise in the counties I have mentioned, a lot of which are home grown. We did not get much inward investment because the Troubles were on our doorstep for decades. I would like to hear our guests' observations in regard to the need to try to eliminate as far as possible regional disparities and to ensure the less advantaged regions, those that do not have a significant population base, are not left behind as we look forward to the further development of the all-Ireland economy.

As the witness pointed out in his presentation, inward investment has been very important in this country. It is not just a question of the work on site at Intel in Leixlip, for example. There are so many subsuppliers, as we all know, spread throughout this country. Inward investment has a huge downstream effect as well. Mr. John FitzGerald, one of the representatives of the university sector, pointed out that were it not for the political leadership here over the years, we would not have those big international players coming here or even considering setting up businesses here to the benefit of our economy. That has been lacking in recent times in Northern Ireland and is one issue that was highlighted in particular. Mr. Mac Flynn suggested we should look beyond this island within academia to seek economic models and ideas worthy of emulation. Where are those models in practice at the minute that we can learn from?