Professor John FitzGerald:

There are a series of papers on Northern Ireland. The most important one is the Vani Barooah-Colin Knox paper of 2015. The ESRI published a second paper by Emer Smyth and the latest paper by Adele Bergin, Seamus McGuinness and Emer Smyth. I also published a paper in 2021. There is a load of evidence on education. I cited nine or ten papers in how the Irish success story is built on education. If those models are applied to Northern Ireland, it will take, as I explained, 20 to 30 years, if the educational system is reformed now. I was asked 15 years ago in France about the Irish success story in terms of unemployment - at the time, things were not that successful here – and I said, “Education”. My French colleague said that would take 20 or 30 years, and I told her that if you do not start now, it will not happen. In the 1980s, education was the one thing protected from cutbacks. We have had a consistent policy but the policy began in 1967 with free education and it has been continued ever since. However, it took 30 years before it paid off. If Northern Ireland starts today, perhaps in 25 years we will see the benefits. Growing children takes a while.