Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

From a planning perspective, it is best to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. Obviously, there is a possibility that the EU could contribute something but, again, it is not clear how much that would be and over what period that might be maintained. Likewise, the US could contribute something and, of course, the UK could, but it is a could. It is better to think of the worst-case scenario and end up achieving something that is somewhat better.

It is important to stress that what we have done in this paper is look at just the subvention as it stands currently, with some adjustments. Unification would also lead to additional costs. There is a huge range of costs, some of them probably quite minor and others probably quite large, and they are ultimately on the practical side of things. There were costs associated with Brexit that nobody ever anticipated. Unification, because you are trying to unify two systems, is very similar but in the other direction. For example, road signs would need to change in Northern Ireland; that is not going to end up happening for free. There are many detailed things that we did not look at, so the potential cost would be much higher. Then, there are these one-off costs, whereas the subvention has been something ongoing for Northern Ireland. Therefore, perhaps the thing to think about with regard to how we can reduce this, as Professor FitzGerald said, is education, which is one of the big factors, and there are other factors that might help to reduce the subvention by improving the productivity of Northern Ireland.