Professor Seamus McGuinness:

I think there is enough capacity, even within the graduate labour market as it stands, to facilitate FDI locating there and people going into it. Approximately 40% to 50% of graduates in the North, when they leave universities, go into jobs that do not require a university degree. They are overeducated and underutilised. There is capacity in the human capital in the North to facilitate a more pragmatic and more domestic approach to FDI. That is the first policy lever we need to address in the sense that if we can persuade companies to relocate here, that is not a hugely costly structural adjustment, as opposed to ramping up that FE side of the equation and the vocational skills, which is likely to be more costly and take more time. There is underutilisation within the Northern Ireland labour market and there is a lot of access capacity. On the graduate side of the equation, when we look at the proportions of young people getting third level qualifications, they are broadly similar in both regions. The system is producing enough people to accommodate better industrial policy.