Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

-----and we just looked at one aspect. You do not ever mix everything together. Again, I have debated it with Seamus McGuinness on public media. I think he is wrong and the literature certainly does things very differently. On changes, productivity changes and potential benefits, none of us knows the future, but we have many decades' worth of research that looks at regional development and convergence, including about the Republic of Ireland and the regions within it. That research shows there are no miracles. They are just not there. With German unification, shock therapy was applied to East Germany, with some very costly mistakes. There was some initial convergence and it has stalled out. We are now 30 years into German reunification and we are looking at at least another 20 or possibly 30 years before that process is actually completed.