Professor Seamus McGuinness:

There are a couple of points there in terms of what are the risks of not planning. Not planning for reunification causes a major risk to the economy of the Republic of Ireland as well because if you do not plan properly and you transition without a plan, you are likely to incur higher costs and reap fewer benefits. There is a necessity, from an Irish Government perspective, to be aware that you cannot predict when a border poll will take place. It is just something that we do not know. It may be next year. It could be in ten years' time. The Government should be aware of the risks to the Irish State of not preparing properly for a border poll and having that planning system in place. As our director has stated frequently, you do not have to believe in a border poll, you do not need to want a border poll, but it needs to recognise that the risk is there and plan appropriately for a border poll.

That planning process needs to begin immediately, in my view, because of the unpredictability of the border poll question in terms of the timing and also because of the huge amount of effort that will be required in order to plan properly for a border poll. This is an unprecedented situation. As we said, we cannot look at the East German situation, which was something that happened overnight. We cannot look at the Scottish situation because that, too, is a different scenario. That is an entity breaking away from another entity. The planning has to be done on a uniquely Irish basis and it needs to make use of the full capacity of the State in terms of the tools that we have in terms of economic planning, such as macroeconomic models and micro-simulation models, and the expertise that we have within the system. It needs to be democratically mandated in the sense that we have to cost out what will happen to health and education services following reunification. That needs to be mandated properly through the use of citizens' assemblies, etc., in our view. The task ahead is phenomenal if we are to achieve a successful transition to unity in the event of a border poll ratifying reunification. There is no time to waste, in terms of initiating the process, and it needs to be done at governmental level.

In terms of what will happen afterwards, this is the point of the planning process. We would say we have identified the problems in terms of the gaps in productivity in Northern Ireland. The modelling process might ask what will happen if we increase educational FE provision in Northern Ireland over a five-year period, what would the impact of that be on productivity and subvention, and, similarly, in terms of FDI. You would work out and model those likely scenarios going forward.

Ultimately, the Northern Ireland economy is underperforming significantly. Its output per capita is approximately the same as the Border and midlands region of the Republic but, obviously, those regions do not have three universities, airports, ports and an infrastructural link that connects them directly to Dublin. The potential of the Northern Ireland economy is vast but it requires rapid policy change.

The question of focusing on the subvention somewhat misses the point. The structural gaps that exist will be costly to plug. It will be costly to improve FE provision and increase that by, say, 20%. It will be costly to invest in infrastructure. However, we also need to recognise that those decisions would probably take place post reunification and there should be a role for external actors, such as the EU, the US and, potentially, a new UK Administration. All of those knowns and unknowns need to be factored into a planning process and mapped out so that people know or have a good idea how the world will change in the period after a border poll - not the morning after a border poll because that is subvention-type analysis which is static - and what the dynamics of the reunification process will look like, over what period, and what the costs and benefits are likely to be.