Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

In our previous report, the 2020 publication, we had a section on German unification and that is from where those numbers come. It depends on what you include; what you think is part of the cost of uniting Germany, and what is not. We have seen this in the discussions here today. Sometimes it is not that easy to identify what exactly is the cost. Hence, there is a range, and it is a big enough range. If you take the lower figure, it is still a very large amount. As I said, it is still accumulating. In fact, in Germany, they did not equalise the wage and pension rates immediately. The pension rates in east Germany only equalised last year. For 30 years, pension rates in east Germany were lower than those in west Germany. This led to a lot of disgruntlement. In the event of a united Ireland, people in Newry may ask why they are getting less than people in Dundalk. That would be very hard to explain. As politicians, the members of the committee are very aware of this. It would be very hard to explain. However, that was actually done in the German case. It is quite an interesting case and there are quite a few lessons to be learned from it, including some mistakes that are best avoided.