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

This is where we come to human capital. One of the biggest challenges for business is being able to get the labour that is necessary. A significant development here is the Higher Education Authority, HEA, legislation, under which each of the higher education institutions, HEIs, is tasked explicitly with increasing the number of places in the South for students from the North. The same is happening vice versa, although I know there are caps in the North. That is crucial to our competitiveness in the future. All the colleges are increasing their numbers, with Trinity College Dublin having agreed to double its places for students from the North coming here. That exchange of learning and expertise and the creation of a human capital pool right across the island will be of benefit to others. We need to continue with that in terms of the equalisation of qualification recognition across the island.

One of the issues that concerns me is veterinary training. There is great potential for the agri industry but we do not have an all-island veterinary school. We only have the one in Dublin. We are trying to achieve an expansion whereby vets would be trained across the island and could work across the island, not just in one jurisdiction. In the context of food security, that becomes more and more important.

There is also the question of decarbonisation and how much of a driver that will be in attracting foreign direct investment, FDI, across the island. We cannot tackle that on a separate six-county and 26-county basis. We just cannot do so even if we try, no more than we can with energy security. These are all the issues that will guarantee our growth into the future.

InterTradeIreland probably is one of the most important agencies right now. I am sure the Chair will agree with me that if there are issues identified as things get up and running again in the North, if there is anything this committee can do to support and help the work InterTradeIreland is doing, we are very open to that, including having frequent engagements with the witnesses, whether by way of written submissions to us on what we can do to support the work they are doing, or otherwise. We are looking at the congruence between the data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, NISRA, and His Majesty's Revenue & Customs, HMRC.

That is an impediment because, no matter what, it is restricting the comparisons we can make and the evidence. We are trying to get on to a more even keel in that regard. The HMRC is there but it does not do an awful lot of the data on a regional basis. Trying to dig down into that can be difficult. Again, no matter what our constitutional preference, we have to look back at all these things to see clearly how we can ensure growth and prosperity for everybody on the island, the potential for businesses, and have those frameworks in place and the environment we need to be able to thrive and prosper as an island. There is a responsibility on us all to work together to do that. I could talk all day about this but I am sure we will meet again to discuss InterTradeIreland's work. In the meantime, I ask the witnesses to keep up the good work.