Professor John FitzGerald:

Another study that Dr. Seán Lyons of the ESRI carried out in 2019 with me and another ESRI colleague looked at commuting across the Border.

There is a Border in commuting. We can understand why people from the Republic do not commute to the North because earnings are much lower in Northern Ireland. However, there is significant commuting into Derry. Derry is part of the north west. The only migration across the Border in 1911, when we were all part of the United Kingdom, was from Donegal women marrying Derry men. Maybe they just commute in to see each other now. For the rest of the Border, particularly from North to South with earnings much higher in the South and the cost of accommodation much lower in the North, you would expect to see that happening but there is a cultural gap. It applies to Catholics but we found that people from Protestant areas are much less likely to commute even though they might earn a lot more in the Republic. There are cultural gaps to interaction. That is less the case in the Donegal-Derry area because it goes back to 1911 or probably long before it but on the rest of the Border there is a border culturally.