The Ireland/Northern Ireland border at Killeen: By Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0
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.
