Professor Gerry McKenna:

The shared island unit has been supportive of co-operation and collaboration in a reasonably gentle way. The substantial funding that came through the HEA for North-South research collaboration essentially came through the unit. That has led to a number of high-calibre projects, both large scale and some smaller scale, that cover the whole range of disciplines. That has promoted North-South co-operation and collaboration. Regrettably, the funding has not been matched by equivalent funding from Northern Ireland, partly because of financial constraints on the Northern Ireland budget. It is to be hoped that might change in future because it is important that both jurisdictions play into these things and put support towards them. In that sense, the shared island unit has been helpful.

The unit has also funded various initiatives that have promoted co-operation and collaboration. Speaking for the RIA, we now have a programme, funded by the shared island unit and the Irish Research Council, looking at the question of student mobility in respect of regions and place. We are particularly concerned about the issue of regions left behind and the extent to which they need to be kept in the picture. There is an area of economics now that deals with the revenge of the places that do not matter, which we have seen across the world. That also applies in the context of Ireland. We do not want people to be forced to leave their regions to develop because, in many cases, particularly that of Northern Ireland and the north west, they tend not to come back. The shared island unit has been helpful and supportive of all those types of benign co-operation and collaboration that we can all support.

Accommodation is, of course, an issue. It has been solved, to some extent, in the northern situation because developers have moved in and provided a lot of accommodation. The fees issues is not that big a deterrent anymore, at least currently, between the South and the North. The fees differential between students studying in the South and North is not that great.

On whether the cap on student numbers could be removed in Northern Ireland without substantially raising student fees, I am not sure what the answer is but it would be politically difficult. It is an important issue. I do not think there is any financial disincentive to students from the Republic studying in Northern Ireland. In terms of accommodation it would seem that the situation is better than it might be in the Republic.