Mr. Justin McCamphill:

I thank Ms Hanna for her question. I believe the current position is that the bar is so high for students from the North going South that I believe the qualifications are equally as difficult to get. If you are asking for a minimum of four subjects and if the points system then requires all of those subjects to be at A* level, you are very much restricting yourself to the top 2% of the population from the North actually scoring high enough academically to get a university place in the Republic. Universities in Northern Ireland certainly seem to have a better way of working out equivalences for qualifications from all sorts of countries. As somebody who went to Queen's University Belfast, I know that it had students there from countries all over the world and has clearly managed to work out an equivalent system. This certainly can allow students from the Republic to come to apply for places on an equal footing.

This is something on which we want to build relationships North and South because that is a good end goal in itself, even setting aside the debate about the future of the island, but we need to encourage social mobility of our people North and South.