Professor John Doyle:

I have spent about three years at it since we first published. I believe it is clear to a certain extent. I know we say that we throw a billion here or there, and in a parliament it is all big money, but in the greater scheme of things it is not a huge proportion of it. It is almost impossible to disentangle and the data simply is not there. The rest of it is there, however, and one only ends up with £10 billion if nuclear weapons are kept, if the UK voluntarily pays its own debt and if we assume the UK abandons its pensioners. Those are things we can get our heads around. If we do not assume that, then the underlying structural deficit will be about £1.5 billion - that is, if we assume that the UK would meet its pension responsibilities and that the debt issue was not there. In the worst-case scenario, it would be up around the £5 billion mark. Mostly, the outcome would be about £1.5 billion and then the other considerations relate to policy decisions.

Going back to Dr. Bergin's point, one of the values of the political system that the Houses of the Oireachtas could bring - and Members are probably the only people who could do it - would be to in some way narrow the range of things that might be considered. If there was an all-party Green Paper which was broadly consensual and which stated that, in broad terms, wages would converge over 15 years, this would take one option off the table and it would not need to be costed. Perhaps such a paper could also outline the kind of health system that people want in a united Ireland. We could allow for negotiations in that regard, particularly with unionist parties. This most likely would not take place until after the referendum but we could state that what I have just outlined is our opening bid. The political system could narrow down what we as academics need to give answers to. At the moment, we have to find answers to everything. The Oireachtas could indicate that while politically we do not agree on everything, here are the sorts of things on which we could seek consensus. Only the Houses of the Parliament can really do that. Governments can like the use of citizens' assemblies or not, but an all-party committee in the Houses of the Oireachtas would have the authority to go beyond one cycle of a government and narrow the range. Of course, there would not be consensus on everything. However, it would narrow down what we need to give answers to around what X costs compared with Y. This would be a really useful contribution in addition to the research that clearly needs to be done.