Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a really interesting conversation and it is really useful for us for the report we are doing on the constitutional future. I am glad we have had the opportunity to look at this today in such a forensic way.

A couple of things strike me. The first is the absolute necessity for the Executive, the assembly and the North-South bodies to be back up and running and operating at their full potential. We have talked before about bringing education into the North-South Ministerial Council to give it focus as we have identified a lot of areas.

The other thing that strikes me is the impact of Brexit and that we are not yet fully able to measure it. We identified some of the opportunity costs, but the exact measurement and diversions will really cause us problems, not only in goods, but also in services. Today we are looking at what we can do. I smiled when it was said we are out of the EU in perpetuity. I would like to think that we are not, as an island, as the EU has said that in the event of reunification, the whole island would go back into the EU. We all see the benefits of that and the problems we have in the agri-industry and many other industries because of being outside the EU.

We have not even touched on the surplus yet. There are things we can do immediately. Mr. Kelly identified the all-island energy market and strategy. We are also looking at that in the committee we are on in the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly, BIPA, as regards how we can become sustainable and the opportunities including onshore wind energy, offshore wind energy, other renewables, decarbonisation, the things we have to tackle as an island and what we can do for business in terms of decarbonisation and the exchange of learning. We have also done some of that in this committee.

All-island human capital development was mentioned. We must look at how to expand our workforce and human capital. It is interesting to look at the needs category comparing NI with anywhere else. I will offer two things on that. One is the success of our DEIS programme in keeping 15- to 19-year-olds in school. It has worked. it would be good if we exchanged that across the island and had something targeted like that. It is interesting to look at Germany because Germany is even more successful at looking at pre-university, pre-further education and how to hold those youngsters in the education and skills system. We can also work on those things.

On the destination for third level education, there have been some encouraging things recently. We did a report in the education committee. The ESRI followed with another report. We know what we need to do, including the development of further access here for students from the North and vice versato encourage student mobility. We can continue to do really good things but we need to do them at a faster pace to mitigate the risks of Brexit and to capitalise on the opportunities presented by dual market access. If we have labour constraints we will not be able to capitalise on them in the way we want to. I am sorry for going on.

We cannot get a measurement of political stability and having the institutions back up and running for the North. We can for the UK and for the South, but not for the North. That is a problem. We talk about having proper data all the time and being able to examine these things fully and deeply.

I will ask about taxation and the Fiscal Commission report recommendations on corporation tax, how we look at other taxation, the responsibilities of the British Government and the devolution of fiscal authority. We are in the OECD situation where we will be 15% and the North will be 19% possibly. How useful would it be for businesses the witnesses deal with and where we want to go as regards prosperity and growth and the impact on GDP and GNI* to have tax harmonisation across the island?