Dr. Martina Lawless:

The first point was to ask whether the business was always there or why Northern Ireland businesses were not taking up the greatest share of Irish imports. It is important to realise it has become more expensive and difficult for Ireland to import from Great Britain. Much of the increase the Deputy has seen in trade with Northern Ireland has not been so much that Northern Ireland businesses were not always taking advantage of opportunities in Ireland, but more that businesses in Ireland have now discovered it is cheaper, easier and more convenient to deal with companies in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain. We have particularly noticed that much of the shift or the sectors that have fallen most in terms of what we are bringing in from Great Britain, food and beverages, are the ones in which we have seen the biggest increase from Northern Ireland. Much of the diversion to Northern Ireland has been as a result of it being more difficult to source goods from Great Britain, rather than that Northern Ireland firms were not already taking advantage there.

As we should have pointed out in the opening statement, Northern Ireland is a relatively small part of the UK as a whole. The large increase in trade from Northern Ireland of 90% is a 90% increase of the 10% of trade. It does not in any way offset the trade falls from the much larger economic partner. However, it shows Northern Ireland is uniquely placed in that the terms of the protocol allow it to continue selling and increase its sales not just into Ireland, but all of the EU, where firms previously may have been sourcing things from Great Britain, while also maintaining its market access to the latter. If the protocol works, as everybody would hope it does, that should put Northern Ireland businesses in a really strong position to attract extra investment and sell into both markets.

The one gap we have in our data analysis is, because, trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain is internal and not international, it is not reflected in these numbers. We cannot say that some of this trade that has increased from Northern Ireland to Ireland is because trade has fallen between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. We do not know that is the case at all nor to what extent trade from Britain to Northern Ireland has changed. As the data are collected in a different way for these internal flows, it will be into the early part of next year, when the annual surveys of Northern Ireland businesses are completed. We can get some small sense from transport statistics available on a more up-to-date basis, but they do not tell us precisely what values are being imported into Northern Ireland. We have the trade movements. One needs to add up where the trade is going. We have three or four of the angles, but we do not have the connection between Northern Ireland and Great Britain to fully see whether overall trade has changed or just been reallocated across the different routes.