>
> Thanks to you and Jason both.
>
> I take it the Irish economic boom has extended to
> Northern Ireland?
No. Though there is more economic activity than before it's still pretty poor and dependent on British and EU subvention as well as the public sector. The South is even paying for some new roads in the North.
Housing costs are beginning to spiral upward (though in real terms they're not nearly as expesnive as in the South) something which is a substitute for real economic activity and brings a tear of joy to many a middle-class eye.
The Alliance party called for the North to pay its own way in a press release this week. That's all very welll, but considering the state of the economy what that actually means is higher taxes at the bottom level and a dramatic scaling back of the public sector and health service - job cuts.
The North has the highest levels of unemployment and lowest GDP in the UK (though I think the per capita GDP figure might be slightly higher than Wales). Unskilled jobs are more common than elsewhere in the UK or in the Republic. Half a million people are "economically inactive" - official unemployment is at 4.5 per cent and working-age economic inactivity is at 28 per cent. Official unemployment was over 18 per cent in the 1980s. The total population is under 1.7 million. Public sector activity makes up over 60 per cent of the economy. NI's manufacturing base (which practically only employed Protestants) such as Harland and Wolff, Shorts and Makceys are now entirely decimated or a shadow of their former selves. Price Waterhouse Coopers seem to be in charge of the economy these days and regularly issue reports demanding further belt-tightening. House prices: http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0207/North.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6402733.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/regions/html/region11.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6207868.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/5048288.stm
General economy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6382849.stm http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/10/02/story8456.asp http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=STAT/05/13&format=HTML&aged=0&language=en&guiLanguage=en http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0118/North.html http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/01/01/story10712.asp http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/02/19/story11959.asp http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/10/29/story18417.asp
Some of those links are a bit old but if you search around you'll find more.
I can heartily recommend the Sunday Business Post if you're interested in economics in Ireland, North or South: http://www.sbpost.ie
Jason.
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