A ‘quiet success story’: How the Good Friday Agreement created an ‘all-Ireland’ economy

Crumlin Road Gaol, once a prison in northwest Belfast, was for decades a potent symbol of Ireland’s turbulent past.  

During its 170-year history, the thick walls of the fortress – known locally as “the Crum” – housed murderers, thieves and more. But its most famous inmates were some of the most notable figures from Ireland’s era of “The Troubles” – a 30-year conflict between unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and republicans who wanted it to join a united Ireland. 

>> Read more : Looking back on Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ on anniversary of Good Friday Agreement

Among those who did spells in the Crum were IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, a young Gerry Adams before he became president of Sinn Fein, and future politicians Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.  

Commemorative events in Ireland this week mark 25 years since The Troubles ended with the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in April 1998. The prison closed its gates two years before, and in the decades that have followed the old building has been transformed.  

Today the Crum houses a museum and events spaces for conferences and weddings. In August 2022 it was announced that a €22 million investment would revamp the A Wing into a whiskey distillery with exhibitions and tasting facilities for visitors, creating 49 new jobs. 

Decades of peace have brought new economic opportunities to Northern Ireland. 

“The landscape has changed completely over the last 15 to 20 years in terms of our tourism offering,” Economy Minister Gordon Lyons told Belfast Live in August 2022. “Tourists who come to Northern Ireland love to taste, they love to see, they love to experience, and they love to hear the stories of the places they are visiting.” 

The all-island economy 

New economic opportunity has also forged ties across the border. An unexpected result of the Good Friday Agreement has been the emergence of the “all-island economy”, made up of businesses and industries that function as cross-border entities between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.     

“If you look at agri-foods, pharmaceuticals and construction, they are all-island supply chains,” says Dr Graham Brownlow, senior lecturer in economics at Queen’s Management School, Belfast.  

Other success stories include a €16 billion dairy industry and a €3.5 billion Single Electricity Market that work in unison throughout the island.  

At the border itself, “cross-border trade has risen in large amounts in recent years, especially in goods”, says Dr Eoin Magennis, senior economist at Ulster University. At least 30,000 people are thought to cross between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland on a daily basis, including many for work.  

This is no small achievement between two countries with separate legislation, tax regulations and currencies – all factors that limit the scale of collaboration. 

“You have little economic relationship outside of certain sectors,” says Brownlow. “And as long as you have two jurisdictions with two different currencies and two different sets of tax rates, there’s a limit to what the all-island economy could be.” 

The whiskey factor    

The distillery at the Crum is not the only major opening scheduled for 2023 in Belfast. Another whiskey distillery is set to open its doors in April at Thompson Dock – the historic port from which the Titanic set sail – acting as an additional draw for the growing numbers of visitors. 

Irish whiskey and tourism are two industries that have emerged as all-Ireland brands working on a global scale to drive profit. Doing so “makes sense”, says Brownlow. The latest figures from Tourism Ireland (which works with both nations’ tourist boards) show a decade of year-on-year growth in tourism across the island, peaking at 11.3 million visitors in 2019. 

Meanwhile, Irish whiskey exports hit €1 billion for the first time in 2022. Globally, the Irish whiskey market was valued at $4.7 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $7.5 billion in the next five years. This is partly thanks to distilleries in the north and south collaborating to agree on unique labelling and production methods that differentiate the islands’ offerings on the global market. Logistics-wise, north-south supply chains see millions of litres of whiskey cross the border to be matured, blended and bottled by businesses on the other side. 

The concept of a single island product is beguiling. “The ingredients that make Irish whiskey a unique product – air, water, grains and an island location – don’t see boundaries,” John Teeling, executive chairman of Great Northern Distillery in Dundalk, told the Irish business lobby, Ibec, for a report published in January 2023. 

But there are also more tangible benefits to economic and business ties. After 25 years of peace, politics in the north still remains largely divided on sectarian lines. In this context, the quiet forging of economic links between communities has had its own positive impact.  

“Business and industry represent vital avenues for alternative, non-ethnic ways of doing politics and navigating the ostensibly deep-rooted sectarian geographies at an everyday level,” says Dr Cillian McGrattan, lecturer in politics at Ulster University. 

Historically, one of the achievements of the all-Ireland economy is that “the politics around it have generally been uncontested, certainly by business”, says Magennis.  

Brexit border troubles  

Brexit has changed the dynamic somewhat. The end of The Troubles may have laid the foundation for economic cooperation, but it was logistically possible due to the creation of the EU Single Market in 1993, which allowed the free movement of goods, capital, services and labour across the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border.     

Rethinking the border rules in the wake of Brexit, now that Northern Ireland has left the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom, has caused tensions to bubble to the surface. The Windsor Framework proposed in February 2023 to ease border checks in the Irish sea has yet to be accepted by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) although other major parties in Northern Ireland have said they broadly support the plan. 

Even so, there is little will on any side to implement a hard border with the south. The Windsor Framework is a step in the right direction, Brownlow says. “It’s superior from an efficiency point of view to the protocol that preceded it. Although we wait to see what the DUP response is.” 

Under the circumstances, the all-island economy is likely to grow. Cooperation between the two countries may have natural limitations, but Brownlow and Magennis agree there is still room for cross-border business to increase, particularly in the service industries.  

“I would fully expect the economy to grow on the island and the links to deepen over time,” says Magennis. “Peace and certainty should mean the all-island economy continues to be the quiet success story for the next 25 years.”