Esmond Birnie: The false dawn of dual market access for Northern Ireland is a distraction from the key economic reforms that Stormont needs to make

It is argued that NI has a peculiar advantage of membership of both the UK’s internal market (68 million people) and the EU 27’s single market of about 450 million people. It is rarely considered whether it is still worth having dual market access (DMA) if the price is higher costs in terms of importing goods from Great Britain to NI given frictions resulting from the Irish Sea border.

We should go to the statistics and try to test how strong the advantages of DMA have been. The protocol has been in force since January 2021 so we now have data for 2021, 2022, 2023 and, in some cases last year and part of this year.

It is claimed that DMA leads to more international businesses coming to NI. Big four business advisory firm EY has an annual publication of numbers of foreign direct investment (FDI) projects coming into the UK regions (EY Investment Monitor 2023-24 in EY, June 2025, EY UK Attractiveness Survey).In 2023, 985 projects came into the UK of which 18 went to NI, so NI’s share was 1.8%. In 2024, 853 projects came into the UK of which 17 or 2% went to NI. NI’s share was a bit below its share of UK population or UK GDP. These indicators would imply NI’s share should have been in the range 2.3% to 2.8%.

NI’s share of total FDI jobs created in 2023 according to the EY data was 2.7% but in 2024 only 1%. The latter figure was well below what might have been expected as NI’s relative share within the UK. It is a result which is hardly consistent with great gains from DMA.

The latest official data from the Office for National Statistics indicates that during 2024-25 there 1,375 FDI projects which came into the UK and of these 37 came to NI: 2.7%. At the same time NI’s share of all the jobs created through FDI was 1.4% (946 out of 69355) (ONS 2025, DBT Inward Investment Results 2024 to 2025).

As is well known (often a subject for complaint on the part of many MLAs) most of the inward investment coming into NI comes to Belfast. Across the world businesses are attracted to the places which have the larger local labour markets. The EY data also allows us to compare Belfast to other big cities across the UK (excluding London since it is the UK capital and the UK financial services sector is dominated by the City of London). In 2020 the rate of FDI projects (number of projects per thousand of population) coming into Belfast was higher than that going into each of the four UK cities – Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Edinburgh – which performed best outside of London during 2020-24 on average. By 2024, four years into the operation of the Protocol/Windsor Framework, Belfast’s relative position had declined.

Its rate of FDI projects was roughly equal to that of Birmingham but now far behind the three other GB cities. In fact, the absolute number of FDI projects coming into Belfast had fallen during 2020-24 from 25 to 7. Precisely the opposite of what might have been predicted if dual market access was having a significant impact.

Let us look at the second claim made about DMA: a double dividend for NI, booming sales to GB and also to the EU. The best official data source for this is probably Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency’s (NISRA) data series the Northern Ireland Economic Trade Statistics 2023 (NIETS) , which covers the 2020-23 period – the first three years of the Protocol.

Comparing 2020 with 2023 NI’s total sales of goods (going to anywhere in the world including NI) grew by 46.1%. Growth of sales to GB was rather better at 67.6% and sales to the Republic of Ireland boomed by 107.2%. Celebrants of dual market access might be inclined to point to these two figures suggesting booming sales both North-South and West-East.

At the same time, the NISRA data also show that the value of NI sales to the EU other than the Republic of Ireland actually fell during 2020-23.That result is very hard to square with DMA having any substantial impact. U

sing an alternative and possibly less reliable source, HMRC’s Regional Trade Statistics based on VAT figures, NI’s sales of goods to the EU did grow rapidly during start 2021 to start 2025 by 44.1% compared to the UK’s growth of such sales by only 26.6%. That might seem to indicate the benefits of DMA but it is notable that NI sales of goods to non- Eu markets grew even more rapidly: by 51.1% (that happened without any DMA advantages).

To conclude, alleged advantages of DMA figure strongly in the rhetoric but are much more elusive in the data. As an economist I think some of the attention being given to DMA is actually a dangerous diversion.

If politicians, business representatives and other policy makers want to improve the growth performance of the NI economy there are at least three areas which should be a much higher priority than DMA: cut the price industry pays for electricity (currently NI prices are amongst the highest in the western world), set the funding of the water system on a sustainable basis so that capacity constraints no longer block business investment and reform the planning system so that it can make critical decisions (eg after eight years the US owned Dalradian gold and rare earth minerals planning application is still awaiting a decision).

• Dr Esmond Birnie, Senior Economist Ulster University Business School