Dr. Adele Bergin:

Professor McGuinness has disagreed with that but I would say we cannot really answer that at all. It would take time and how much time depends on what policies we are talking about, how ambitious they are and in what timeframe they are going to be implemented. Do we need supporting policies to get that education policy through? Until we answer that, it is very hard to put any kind of time on it. To say that this could happen, as in the IIEA papers, in 20 years might seem like a very long timeframe but it also depends on what we are talking about. There needs to be a bit more before we can get into some of the costs. We need to be a bit more specific on the policies and then we can see. There may be some low-hanging fruit in some cases, something that can be implemented quickly. There may be other policies that might actually take years to implement but may be worth doing, not just for economic but also for social reasons. All of these things have to be put together into the mix.