Whither Irish Citizens’ Social Rights in Post-Brexit Europe? #

Michelle Norris and Michael L Collins

The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union carries significant consequences for the island of Ireland. Irrespective of the details of any final EU-UK agreement, there is no doubt that Brexit will have enormous implications for businesses, trade and the economy, governments and policy-makers, and also for citizens of Ireland. Geography and history have forged close economic and social ties between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which have been strengthened and extended by the open borders, trade and travel enabled by these jurisdictions’ EU membership since 1973. The UK’s withdrawal from the EU will disrupt these ties and will require the introduction of alternative legal and policy arrangements and services to facilitate continued co-operation and economic and social links between Ireland and the UK. Policy and legal adjustments will also be needed to manage relations between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland.

The decision to leave or remain in the EU and the implications of these choices have been vociferously debated in the UK. However, Brexit’s implications for Ireland and its relationship with Northern Ireland and Britain received only minimal attention during the debates which preceded the referendum. Since then, somewhat ironically, this issue has received much more attention because it proved to be the main barrier to finalising an agreement. These post-referendum discussions have focused mainly on consequences for peace in Northern Ireland and on business, trade and the economy. The potential impact on individual social rights has been largely neglected (Murray et al, 2018; Doughty Chambers, 2018).

Social rights: evolution and profile #

Before Irish independence and the establishment of Northern Ireland in 1921, both jurisdictions were part of the UK and their social policies and embryonic welfare states were largely (but not entirely) integrated with Great Britain. Irish independence resulted in the disintegration of this arrangement (although strong similarities remain between the UK and Irish welfare states) but the period since has seen a slow process of introducing and extending a comprehensive package of reciprocal rights for Irish and UK citizens to travel to each other’s countries, live and work there and avail themselves of welfare services and benefits. This process started with the Common Travel Area (CTA) agreement between the Irish and UK governments and was extended when the UK and Ireland both joined the EU in 1973 and again when the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed by both governments in 1998.

Rights to move freely, live and work #

Underpinning the scale of the challenge for Irish citizens’ social rights associated with Brexit is the very strong integration of the populations of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Data from 2016 showed that 2.1 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population (approximately 38,000) were born in Ireland while 1.2 per cent of Ireland’s population (approximately 57,000) were born in Northern Ireland. As a proportion of total population, these figures are not enormous, but they do account for a large proportion of migrants in each jurisdiction. Among the 117,000 EU27-born individuals who lived in Northern Ireland in 2016, 33 per cent were born in Ireland (ONS, 2017). These data also indicated that in 2016 6 per cent of the population of Ireland (277,200 individuals) were born in the UK. In the same year an estimated 389,000 people born in Ireland were resident in the UK. This constituted 5.9 per cent of the UK population in 2016 and was the fourth largest overseas-born population resident in the UK (ONS, 2016).

The Irish, Northern Irish and UK populations are not integrated in a spatially even pattern across these jurisdictions, however. It is estimated that one out of every three Irish-born people living in the UK in 2016 lived in London (98,100 people); 83 per cent lived in England (ONS, 2016). This reflects the distribution of the migrant population in the UK more broadly. In contrast the spatial distribution of UK-born residents of Ireland broadly reflects the distribution of the overall Irish population. The latest available data on this issue for Northern Ireland reveal that in 2011 61 per cent of Irish-born residents of Northern Ireland lived in the five council areas which abut the border (ONS, 2017).

The integration of the populations along both sides of the Irish border is reinforced by the large numbers of commuters who cross the border in both directions on a daily or weekly basis. The 2016 Irish census identified 9,336 people who crossed the border daily into Northern Ireland for school or work (CSO, 2017). Of these, three-quarters were workers while the remainder were schoolchildren or in third-level education. As might be expected, data on the origin/destination of these commuters reveal that cross-border commuting is conducted primarily between the counties which immediately abut the border: 88.7 per cent of cross-border commuters from Ireland into Northern Ireland lived in border counties.

The most recent data on cross-border commuting from Northern Ireland into Ireland are from the 2011 Northern Irish census. These indicate that 6,456 usual residents of Northern Ireland travelled to Ireland for work or education. Again, most had destinations in adjacent border counties, trends which indicate that such commuting is most likely very frequent (NISRA, 2017).

Beyond commuters, data from a 2017 UK government report on the CTA estimated the total number of people crossing the border each year, for any reason, at around 110 million. Of these, 43 million passed through the 15 principal crossing points while the remainder passed through one of the other 193 crossing points or travelled by train (870,000) or coach (900,000). The paper reported (HM Government, 2017: 1): ‘Cross-border travel and movements between Northern Ireland and Ireland are extensive and, for many people, a regular feature of everyday life’.

Access to education #

There is a strong tradition of cross-border commuting for education purposes on the island of Ireland by schoolchildren and those enrolled in higher-education institutions, as well as longer-term movement to avail of education services on the other side of the border (Department for the Economy, 2017).

Data from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) indicate that in 2015-16 there were around 2,200 students domiciled in Ireland enrolled in higher education in Northern Ireland, representing 4 per cent of total enrolments in the institutions (HM Government, 2017). Data from Ireland’s Higher Education Authority (HEA) suggest that in 2016-17 there were 893 enrolments by students domiciled in Northern Ireland in third-level colleges south of the border. These data indicate that cross-border enrolments in higher education on the Island of Ireland rose steadily until 2010-11 but have declined subsequently.

There are substantially greater numbers of students from Ireland studying in higher-education institutions in Great Britain than students travelling in the opposite direction. According to the HEA (2016), Ireland is the seventh largest source country for UK third-level students. Between 8,000 and 10,000 students from Ireland were registered in higher education in England, Scotland and Wales in 2016 and the numbers of Irish students registered in institutions in Northern Ireland brought the total UK figure to between 10,000 and 12,000. The equivalent number of students from England, Scotland and Wales studying in Ireland stood at 1,548 in 2016 (HEA, 2016).

Social-security benefits and pension rights #

Pension incomes provide further evidence of the strength, and long duration, of migration flows between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK. The ONS found that in February 2017 134,840 recipients of the UK state pension were resident in Ireland. This means that Irish residents were the largest group of overseas UK pension recipients in the EU that year and they equated to 21 per cent of the population aged 65 years and above in Ireland (ONS, 2017). In November 2015 there were an estimated 35,000 UK residents in receipt of an Irish government pension ; most of these (85 per cent) were in receipt of the contributory state pension while the others were in receipt of the widow(er)’s and surviving partner’s contributory pension (Dáil Éireann, 2015, vol 916, no. 2: 1913).

Data from the Irish Department of Social Protection provide insights into the proportion of recipients of the main categories of social-security benefits in Ireland who are UK nationals. In 2016, they comprised 3.2 per cent of benefit claimants in Ireland. However, the proportion of recipients varied according to the category of benefit. UK nationals accounted for only 2.5 per cent of recipients of the state old-age pension but they constituted 4.2 per cent of recipients of employment supports for individuals of working age and 6.1 per cent of recipients of supplementary payments (such as rent supplement).

The only comparable data for the Irish in the UK in 2016, from the Department of Work and Pensions, cover Great Britain only. They indicate that Irish nationals in Great Britain made up 2.8 per cent of all claimants of working-age benefits in that year. Irish nationals in the UK were more likely to claim benefits available for bereaved individuals (they made up 0.75 per cent of claimants of this category of benefits) and job-seekers (0.33 per cent of claimants were Irish) and less likely to claim benefits for carers and lone parents (accounting for just 0.18 per cent of claimants).

Access to health services #

Comprehensive data on cross-border usage of healthcare and other social services are not available. However, the data which are available point to high take-up, particularly by residents of border counties. For instance, Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, Co Armagh, treated 885 patients from counties Monaghan, Louth and Cavan, across the border, in 2016-17. Similarly, patients living in Co Donegal enjoy access to radiotherapy services in Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry/Londonderry ; currently, arrangements are in place to treat 385 cancer patients from Ireland there. The Northern Ireland Department for the Economy (2018) also reports that between 2011 and 2015 there were on average 280 children per annum born in hospitals to mothers ordinarily resident in Ireland.

Brexit’s ‘east-west’ and ‘north-south’ implications #

The UK’s decision to leave the EU has the potential to remove a layer of the framework of reciprocal social rights which UK and Irish citizens enjoy in each other’s countries. As we have shown, in terms of the numbers of people affected, the scale of the British-Irish (‘east-west’) challenge for citizens’ social rights is much greater, because the UK-born population living in Ireland is substantial, as is the Irish population living in England and in London in particular. In absolute terms, the Irish-born population living in Northern Ireland, and vice versa, is smaller. However, the intensity of the relationship between these two populations is stronger, particularly along the border. For border communities, Brexit does not just raise concerns about the transferability of pension or social-security entitlements which individuals might have accrued in one jurisdiction before moving to the other. Individuals in border communities often travel to the neighbouring jurisdiction on a daily basis for work, education or healthcare. Therefore, if any ‘hard border’ were to be imposed between Northern Ireland and Ireland after Brexit it would be enormously disruptive, socially as well as economically, for these ‘border people’.

Yet Britain’s departure from the EU will not undermine the majority of these reciprocal social rights. Most elements of the framework predate, and are not dependent on, the UK’s membership of the EU: they were put in place as part of the extensive CTA suite of arrangements for direct co-operation between the UK and Irish governments and all the evidence indicates that they will remain in force after Brexit. However, as not all elements of the CTA are underpinned by legislation or treaties—some reflect custom and practice only—there is a pressing need to formalise these arrangements. As Murray, O’Donoghue and Warwick (2018: vii) recommend, it will be ‘essential to place the CTA on a treaty footing to ensure family, resident, welfare, social, political and civil rights continue’.

Legally underpinning the custom-and-practice elements of the CTA would be adequate to address the majority of east-west challenges for Irish citizens’ social rights created by Brexit. But the north-south challenges will be much more difficult to resolve. Many commentators have highlighted the potential for Brexit to undermine the GFA and raised concerns about the implications of this for peace. This chapter has further highlighted its potential for undermining Irish citizens’ social rights.

Central to the political accommodation achieved by the GFA is its explicit recognition of the existence of multiple identities in Northern Ireland—including allegiance to Britain (‘unionists’) versus allegiance to Ireland (‘nationalists’)—and therefore of the entitlement of people born in Northern Ireland to hold UK or Irish citizenship or both. While the UK remained an EU member there was almost no differentiation between the rights and entitlements of Irish and UK citizens living in Northern Ireland, but this changes after Brexit.

Most notably, unless the provisions of the CTA are strengthened and extended, Irish and UK citizens living in Northern Ireland may have different rights and entitlements after Brexit. Inevitably, Brexit will create new divisions between people in Northern Ireland on the basis of their political identity and the variations in rights that accompany this. Given past experiences of societal divisions in Northern Ireland, the potential for these new realities to undermine cohesion within society there must be minimised. This chapter has also highlighted the key role of the open Irish border, which has been facilitated by the joint EU membership of Ireland, supporting the living standards of communities in the border region and enabling access to health and education services.

Finally, because the analysis here focuses only on the rights of Irish citizens who visit, live or work in the UK, it has not discussed the very significant loss of social rights which citizens of other EU member states who are resident in the UK, and UK citizens resident in other EU members, will most likely suffer after Brexit. Unless an agreement can be reached between the UK and the EU these fellow European citizens are likely to suffer a very significant diminution of their social rights.

References #

Central Statistics Office (2017), 2016 Census, Dublin: CSO

Department for the Economy (2017), Background Evidence on the Movement of People across the Northern Ireland—Ireland Border, Belfast: DfE

Department for Work and Pensions (various years), Official Statistics, London: HMSO

Department of Social Protection (various years), Statistical Information on Social Welfare Services: Annual Report, Dublin: DSP

Doughty Street Chambers (2018), Report on Human Rights Implications of UK Withdrawal from the EU: An Independent Legal Opinion, Belfast: DSC

Higher Education Authority (2016), Brexit and Irish Higher Education and Research: Challenges and Opportunities, Dublin: HEA

HM Government (2017), Additional Data Paper: Common Travel Area Data and Statistics, the UK’s exit from the European Union: Northern Ireland and Ireland—position paper, London: HMSO

Murray, C, A O’Donoghue and B Warwick (2018), Discussion Paper on Brexit, Dublin: Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission

Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2017), Northern Ireland Annual Tourism Statistics 2016, Belfast: NISRA

Office for National Statistics (2017) Living abroad: Dynamics of Migration between the UK and Ireland, London: ONS

——— (2016), Population of the UK by Country of Birth and Nationality, London: ONS