Esmond Birnie: Paul Murphy was wrong to emphasise the minor boost to Northern Ireland from dual market access

The overall impact of those changes, both in terms of improving democratic scrutiny and in terms of easing the so-called ‘Irish Sea Border’, are likely to be modest in any case.

There was an inevitability about this outcome. Under the Independent Review’s Terms of Reference the former Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, could only make such recommendations as would be likely to command cross-community political support in Northern Ireland.

We therefore seem stuck in a sort of economic and political conundrum. The status quo under the Protocol/Windsor Framework clearly lacks cross community consent (this was shown by the vote in Stormont on the arrangements) but at the same time it is very hard to find any radical change away from those arrangements which would command cross-community consent. Thus there is a danger we will be stuck with what we’ve now got.

Lord Murphy very correctly collected evidence from political and business stakeholders suggesting that some aspects of existing democratic scrutiny of the Windsor Framework are not working well. Hence his suggestion that the Stormont Democratic Scrutiny Committee be allowed up to 10 working days to decide whether to launch an inquiry into the impact of EU legislation rather than the existing limit of five working days.

He notes that the almost universal view of business of the Duty Reimbursement Scheme is negative. NI based businesses bringing in goods from GB which are then subject to an EU tariff can claim back that money but the scheme moves too slowly and imposes cash flow problems on businesses.

Lord Murphy also noted concerns about trade diversion under the Windsor Framework: NI based customers shifting to Republic of Ireland/EU suppliers in preference to GB based ones and this not necessarily because the former had been lower cost but because of the difficulties in terms of bringing in goods from GB. The official data relating to trade are highly suggestive that such trade diversion has happened since 2020.

One place where Lord Murphy’s analysis is flawed is when his review recommends that the UK government and Stormont Executive make much more of the (alleged) advantages of Northern Ireland’s so-called ‘Dual Market Access’ (ie to both GB and the EU Single Market) under the Windsor Framework. The problem here is that there has so far been a lack of evidence that Dual Market Access has brought any marked benefits.

In the four and half years since the trading arrangements came into place there has been little or no sign of any up-tick in levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) coming into Northern Ireland in terms of the amounts recorded by business investment surveys such as the EY UK Attractiveness Surveys.

The most recent EY UK Attractiveness Survey, published in June 2025 shows that comparing 2023 and 2024 in terms of employment the scale of FDI coming into Northern Ireland actually declined both in terms of the number of jobs and as a share of the UK total:

That EY publication also compares the performance of Belfast city region to other UK cities as an attractor of FDI projects. Compared to the top two GB cities outside of London, Manchester and Glasgow, Belfast shows both absolute and relative decline during 2020-24. Whereas in 2020 Belfast was doing as well as Glasgow and not far off Manchester, by 2024 in terms of number of projects Belfast was very far behind. This is hardly consistent with the much vaunted benefits of Dual Market Access:

So, Dual Market Access or our unique market access to both GB and the EU sounds fine in theory but the benefits don’t seem to appear in the statistics. Given that the protocol was in place from January 2021 arguments about the alleged benefits taking time to feed through are wearing thin.

In any case, dual market access was never going to apply to service sector activities (the Windsor Framework arrangements apply only to goods). Moreover, a GB based firm is unlikely to shift production to Northern Ireland given that even if it benefits from access to the EU it will probably lose out to the extent that it uses GB origin goods as inputs (which would be caught be the Irish Sea border frictions).

President Trump’s America First economic policies imply the extent of mobile US origin investment going forward is likely to decline so there is less scope to look for dual market access related investment. We should also face up to the reality that Northern Ireland faces locational disadvantages in some branches of manufacturing industry – particularly activities which are energy intensive given our relatively high electricity prices (higher than the UK average which in turn exceed prices in France, Germany and the USA).

In short, Dual Market Access benefits may not amount to all that much in practice and it is a pity that Lord Murphy felt he had to emphasise them.

​

• Dr Esmond Birnie is Senior Economist Ulster University Business School