Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I will offer a comment from IBEC. I thank Deputy Bruton for the input. I agree about the dislocation for our regions. When we overlap the Covid legacy and Brexit impact, the regional disparity will become a much more severe public policy issue. To build on what Mr. O'Hara is saying, the key to intervention is bringing agility into public policy. When I look at dislocation that we have seen in industry and in the economy and the past decade, some interventions that have worked well include resourcing institutes of technology, now the technological universities. Those are crucial to our regional development agenda. We have seen many examples of them being able to bring agility to work with companies that are either facing challenge or opportunity, to help them pivot, to get supports for innovation, to have upskilling, and to get the labour force resources through to those local and regional areas. That is a game changer.

We have many programmes that we know work well, whether it is Skillnet or Springboard, and there is a need to be deep and ambitious with innovation. The most significant challenge of Brexit is competitiveness, and the solution to that will be innovation and productivity, working through these advanced technological universities, resourcing them better, and blending innovation, upskilling and training supports for businesses and organisations working at a regional level with businesses. That will help the regions. I am concerned about the regional disparity that we will see in the coming years.