Mr. Paul Mac Flynn:

At the moment we talk about the brain drain being students from Northern Ireland who go to university or to their first job in Britain and do not come back. Having that kind of mobility in an all-island context is very important. There are a lot of soft cultural issues there although they may not be hard economic barriers to that greater mobility. I would say it should not be taken in isolation though. It would be a terrible thing to replace a brain drain to Britain from Northern Ireland with a brain drain from North to South and people not coming back. Doing this would involve tackling mobility but also tackling the dynamic within the Northern Ireland economy where skills acquisition is not being rewarded in the labour market. That means having a much more co-ordinated approach to the economy where when planning out skills programmes, one has employers, unions and the Government in the room and everyone is agreed on the direction of travel with regard to particular skill sets for which we are willing to put money into investing in education courses. Then there would be employers and possible investors saying how things are joined up. The economic strategy for Northern Ireland should also be the skills strategy. The two cannot be taken in isolation. If you can get that level of co-ordination in Northern Ireland and break that cycle, then you can start to do even more exciting things to allow graduates to find their full effect and secure their most advantageous employment wherever that occurs on the island. It is all together or not at all.