As a Northerner living in Dublin, I sometimes I get weary with the way that the great bulk of news from Northern Ireland is negative: the continuing sectarianism; the logjam over legacy; the ineffectiveness of the NI Executive; the poisoning of Lough Neagh; the declining health service; the hopelessness of the DUP; the rows over inconsequential tribal issues like Irish language signs at Belfast’s new central station; and the poor economic, education and health statistics when compared to the Republic. It’s as if nothing that is good can ever come out of NI. I was guilty of joining in the ‘doom and gloom’ party in my last blog, by reporting the startling statistical gaps between North and South (almost all of them strongly in the Republic’s favour) revealed by a recent Economic and Social Research Institute study. More on that in the second half of this blog.

However the news isn’t all black. There are more shared values in that famously divided society than one might think. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS) – the largest international social survey of its kind, conducted in over 100 countries – the Belfast-based Social Change Initiative (in partnership with King’s College London’s Policy Institute) has recently published Values and Attitudes in Northern Ireland 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement. This report found a shift in social attitudes and values among the people there which challenges many people’s long-held perceptions of the region. The Social Change Initiative is an international, philanthropic organisation led by highly regarded people like Martin O’Brien (formerly director of the Campaign for the Administration of Justice) and Avila Kilmurray (formerly director of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust),

Among the report’s conclusions are:

• “Social attitudes have changed considerably, with the Northern Ireland public – particularly younger generations – having become much more open on key social issues like abortion, divorce, homosexuality and euthanasia. Internationally, Northern Ireland now ranks among the most socially liberal nations.  
• We have also become more comfortable with difference, with growing acceptance of people who would have been historically marginalised. For instance, levels of homophobia and xenophobia, assessed in terms of those we would be comfortable having as neighbours, have decreased.  
• There is greater openness to workers from abroad, even when jobs are scarce, and support among many for more open immigration policies. Though a greater share of the Northern Ireland population supports stricter limits on immigration than in other UK nations.  
• Despite our history of division, the survey finds limited evidence of strong affective polarisation (i.e., strong negative feelings about the ‘opposing’ political party or group).  
• While the Northern Ireland public support democracy as a political system and are interested in politics, they are highly dissatisfied with the way politics is working in practice – much more so than in many western European countries including Great Britain.  Confidence in government institutions and the press are also at worryingly low levels in Northern Ireland. People have much higher levels of confidence in civil society organisations such as universities, women’s organisations, NGOs, trade unions and churches.”

Looking to the future, although the World Values Survey findings for Northern Ireland raise several concerns, the report’s authors say they also suggest ways forward that can build on NI people’s shared values:  

• “We need to create more space for values-based conversations that focus less on religion and identity politics and acknowledge the plurality of views that exists, for instance, the more socially liberal views of younger people compared with the more traditional views held by many older people and the religious.  
• Northern Ireland is not as polarised or divided a society as is often portrayed. The data suggests more common ground exists across and between groups around shared values, with less support for extreme positions. This presents further opportunities for dialogue and conversation. 
• Despite being very dissatisfied with how politics is currently working, we have an interest in politics and belief in the democratic process that can be built upon. Civil society institutions, which enjoy much higher levels of public confidence, could take a more leading role in building inclusive civic engagement and encouraging more participative democracy. These civic conversations must involve young people who are more disillusioned with the functioning of a democratic society, presenting a challenge for future stability if left unattended.” 

This chimes strongly with my call in my two February blogs for reconvening the 1994-1996 Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and holding an all-island Forum on Common Values.¹ “We need to create more space for values-based conversations [both within Northern Ireland and on the island as a whole, I would hold] that focus less on religion and identity politics” and acknowledge the views of younger people, say the report’s authors.

On a different issue: further to my blog last month on the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report on the major and growing gaps between economic and social well-being in Northern Ireland and the Republic, the strongly unionist economist Graham Gudgin (he was part of David Trimble’s backroom team in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement) has pointed out some very different ways of interpreting those findings. He says “the hugely distorted national accounts of Ireland deceive people into thinking that the Republic of Ireland has higher living standards than the UK and especially Northern Ireland. When correctly measured the opposite is true. Living standards are higher in the UK than in Ireland and even Northern Ireland has higher living standards.”²

He quotes the former Governor of the Bank of Ireland, Patrick Honohan, writing in 2021:“Ireland is a prosperous country, but not as prosperous as is often thought because of the inappropriate use of misleading, albeit conventional statistics.”

Instead of being one of the richest countries in the EU as commonly claimed, Dr Honohan concluded that it was probably 12^Th richest. He went on: “There is less consumption per capita than in the United Kingdom, and on this metric we are closer to New Zealand, Israel and Italy, than to the United States, Switzerland or Norway (which is where the GDP comparison would put Ireland).”

Gudgin then quotes from the ESRI’s recent report: “Internationally, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is the most commonly used measure for comparing living standards across countries. GDP-based measures can be misleading for Ireland so here we focus on measures using modified gross national income (GNI*), as it is a more reliable measure of output in Ireland. Comparing GNI* per capita in Ireland to GDP per capita in Northern Ireland shows there was a gap of 57 per cent in favour of Ireland in 2022”.

He goes on: “As is well-known, Ireland’s official statistics for GDP are hugely distorted by multi-national companies diverting global profits into Ireland to take advantage of some of the world’s lowest corporation tax rates and laxest tax rules. Taking a straight comparison of GDP per head at current exchange rates, Ireland’s per capita GDP is second only to Luxemburg in the EU and is exactly double that of the UK. Although widely included in international statistical comparisons, this headline measure of GDP gives zero insight into comparative living standards. To combat this problem Ireland’s Central Statistics Office uses alternative measures of national income which attempt to exclude the profits of multi-national companies.

“The most accepted of these measures is Modified Gross National Income (GNI*). This is GDP excluding profits repatriated abroad by multinational companies, and also excluding profits of foreign-owned companies which have registered their HQs in Ireland for tax purposes. Finally, depreciation is excluded on aircraft leasing and intellectual property. What US Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick rightly calls ‘a tax scam’ revolves around (mainly American) multi-national companies registering in Ireland their intellectual property (brands, patents etc.) derived from R&D conducted abroad. This hugely magnifies their profits declared in Ireland, but also means that huge amounts of annual depreciation are added into Ireland’s GDP. A significant part of this comes from aircraft leasing, since around 90% of the world’s commercial airliners are owned in Ireland purely for tax reasons.

“Irish living standards are, of course, not double those of the UK, but nor are they 18% higher than the UK, as suggested by using the GNI* measure.  This is because the modified GNI measure is still not free of distortions since there is no adjustment for intellectual property produced in Ireland by multi-national companies.

“The authors of the ESRI study recognize that their 57% estimate for southern living standards relative to those in Northern Ireland may be exaggerated…Instead, they calculate another measure which they say is free of distortions caused by multi-national firms. This is household disposable income (i.e. household incomes including benefits, pensions etc. net of tax).  Allowing for differences in prices north and south (but not school or medical fees which need to be paid in the South), they calculate that living standards in the South are 18% higher than in Northern Ireland.  This figure seems wrong. OECD data for household incomes per head in 2021 in purchasing power parity show approximately equal levels between Ireland and Northern Ireland, with the UK average 20% higher than either.

“Household disposable income is still not a direct measure of living standards. To return to Dr Honohan, a superior measure is consumption per head, including both consumer spending by households and spending by government on behalf of households on such things as health, education and housing. This measure has the not very catchy title of  Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) and is published regularly by the OECD and by the EU statistical agency Eurostat. It is adjusted for differences in the prices of goods and services, which are 15% higher in Ireland than in the UK.

“This easy to access AIC measure shows that Irish living standards were 12^th in the EU in 2023 and 12% below the UK. Northern Ireland is not separately identified by OECD or Eurostat, but a simple calculation using UK official data indicates that its AIC is 7% below the UK average. A simple subtraction indicates that living standards in Northern Ireland are thus 5% above those in the Republic of Ireland.

“Northern Ireland is ninth in the list of the UK’s 12 regions ranked by GDP per head and close to the seventh. It is below the UK average for living standards but by no means the poorest. Its living standards are boosted by generous levels of public services where spending per head is 10% above the UK average, and by low house prices. Northern Ireland’s economic model based on generous subsidies to a peripheral region is thus more advantageous for its citizens than Ireland’s tax-haven model.”

Gudgin criticises the ESRI study for “a lack of scholarly rigour and perhaps a determination to show Northern Ireland in a poor light. Similarly, the failure of the ESRI study to mention the AIC figures, despite the authors being on record as describing them as a ‘useful indicator’ of living standards, is unprofessional.  A more interesting study might have been to explain why Ireland’s tax-haven economic model has been unable to generate higher living standards than in Northern Ireland, one of the UK’s poorer regions, in more than half a century of application.”

I am neither an economist nor a statistician. I don’t know who is right on this; I cite it only to provoke thinking and add a little balance to the debate. I have crossed swords with Gudgin in the past over his use of dubious statistics to downplay Ireland’s 20th century economic performance and the role of the EU in supporting the Good Friday Agreement.³ I have also queried ESRI reports, notably on education.⁴

Was it Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli who invented the phrase: “Lies, damned lies and statistics”?

¹ ‘Is it time to reconvene the 1994-1996 Forum for Peace and Reconciliation?’ (4 February) and ‘Theme for an all-island Values Forum: Love is the doctrine of this country?’ (20 February)

² https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/northern-ireland-richer-than-ireland/

³ ‘Apocalyptic views of Brexit?’ Letters to the Editor, Irish Times, 28 September 2016

⁴ For example, a 2022 ESRI report on on education systems north and south failed even to mention (or reference) a significant study I did in 2011 (when I was director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies) on obstacles to cross-border undergraduate education for the IBEC-CBI Joint Business Council and the EURES cross-border partnership.