[ISL] "Meddling with Invisible Borders? How Brexit will affect the island of Ireland"
Open Democracy's Polly Lavin writes about how Brexit will hit the divided island of Ireland.
With the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 new opportunities opened up for cross border cooperation and trade. At the time border checkpoints and military lookouts were positioned across the North and border counties of the island. These days, the checkpoints and military towers are long gone. If you drive from Northern Ireland into Southern Ireland, blink and you will miss the fact that you have crossed an ‘invisible’ international border. You would be in good company though, a total of 14 million trips are made across the border every day between Dundalk in Ireland and Newry in Northern Ireland for business and shopping and more. The two economies of the island are inextricably linked and commerce is strong with Tourism equating to 2.1m visitors (1.7m North to South/400k South to North) and Cross Border trade in manufacturing accounting for €3.1 billion in 2014 (€1.75bn North to South and €1.3bn South to North). Agri-food sectors are also vitally important to both jurisdictions and trade in food and drink moves both ways.
In terms of jobs almost 15,000 people commute to work on a daily cross border basis consisting of 8,300 North to South and 6,500 South to North. The 2011 Census highlighted that ‘Proportionally twice as many (0.4 per cent) Northern Ireland residents commuted to Ireland to work or study as commuted from Ireland to Northern Ireland (0.2 per cent)’. A total of 3,064 students are studying in both jurisdictions from either side of the border which breaks down into 719 North to South and 2,345 South to North. The north of Ireland is reliant on the Southern Irish economy and cross border trade is up 7% since 2013 an economy that was in recovery since 2010.
Infrastructure initiatives have also benefitted both sides of the island and facilitated cooperation such as the development of the Dublin-to-Belfast transport corridor, the fibre optic communications networks “Project Kelvin” and investment by both governments into City of Derry Airport which sees 38% of its passengers being from the Republic of Ireland. The Single Electricity Market (SEM) is also under development and will lead to lower costs which at present are some of the highest in Europe. The Good Friday Agreement also saw the creation of 7 new North / South Bodies amongst them InterTrade Ireland and Tourism Ireland. Economic benefits have also come by cross border programmes including Interreg, Peace, European Fisheries Fund etc. and a total of nearly £2.5billion came into Northern Ireland during the last EU funding round (2007 - 2013).
Challenges exist for both jurisdictions which could be affected by the UK voting to leave the EU. They are both two very different economies and are competing against one another for business/foreign direct investment (FDI) but have shown strong commercial cooperation when they are exporting. Outside of the Belfast/Dublin corridor connectivity is poor across the island and there are significant policy anomalies in some key areas e.g. VAT on tourism is 20% in Northern Ireland v.s. 9% in the Republic of Ireland. There is also exchange rate volatility.
With the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 new opportunities opened up for cross border cooperation and trade. At the time border checkpoints and military lookouts were positioned across the North and border counties of the island. These days, the checkpoints and military towers are long gone. If you drive from Northern Ireland into Southern Ireland, blink and you will miss the fact that you have crossed an ‘invisible’ international border. You would be in good company though, a total of 14 million trips are made across the border every day between Dundalk in Ireland and Newry in Northern Ireland for business and shopping and more. The two economies of the island are inextricably linked and commerce is strong with Tourism equating to 2.1m visitors (1.7m North to South/400k South to North) and Cross Border trade in manufacturing accounting for €3.1 billion in 2014 (€1.75bn North to South and €1.3bn South to North). Agri-food sectors are also vitally important to both jurisdictions and trade in food and drink moves both ways.
In terms of jobs almost 15,000 people commute to work on a daily cross border basis consisting of 8,300 North to South and 6,500 South to North. The 2011 Census highlighted that ‘Proportionally twice as many (0.4 per cent) Northern Ireland residents commuted to Ireland to work or study as commuted from Ireland to Northern Ireland (0.2 per cent)’. A total of 3,064 students are studying in both jurisdictions from either side of the border which breaks down into 719 North to South and 2,345 South to North. The north of Ireland is reliant on the Southern Irish economy and cross border trade is up 7% since 2013 an economy that was in recovery since 2010.
Infrastructure initiatives have also benefitted both sides of the island and facilitated cooperation such as the development of the Dublin-to-Belfast transport corridor, the fibre optic communications networks “Project Kelvin” and investment by both governments into City of Derry Airport which sees 38% of its passengers being from the Republic of Ireland. The Single Electricity Market (SEM) is also under development and will lead to lower costs which at present are some of the highest in Europe. The Good Friday Agreement also saw the creation of 7 new North / South Bodies amongst them InterTrade Ireland and Tourism Ireland. Economic benefits have also come by cross border programmes including Interreg, Peace, European Fisheries Fund etc. and a total of nearly £2.5billion came into Northern Ireland during the last EU funding round (2007 - 2013).
Challenges exist for both jurisdictions which could be affected by the UK voting to leave the EU. They are both two very different economies and are competing against one another for business/foreign direct investment (FDI) but have shown strong commercial cooperation when they are exporting. Outside of the Belfast/Dublin corridor connectivity is poor across the island and there are significant policy anomalies in some key areas e.g. VAT on tourism is 20% in Northern Ireland v.s. 9% in the Republic of Ireland. There is also exchange rate volatility.