CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

A public meeting will be held in the Silverbirch Hotel in Omagh on Tuesday 29 May (6-9 pm) to discuss the obstacles to mobility facing people wanting to move across the Irish border to work, study and live.

The meeting is part of a consultation and research process which will lead to a major report on obstacles to cross-border mobility to be presented to the North/South Ministerial Council, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government. The report is being compiled for the North/South Ministerial Council by PricewaterhouseCoopers in Belfast and Indecon Economic Consultants in Dublin.

The public meeting in Omagh, which follows a similar meeting in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan on 16 May, is being organised for the North/South Ministerial Council by the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh. Nearly 100 people attended the meeting in Carrickmacross.

A progress report from PricewaterhouseCoopers/Indecon says that over 9,000 people from Northern Ireland travelled to the Republic to work in the year 2000. This was a dramatic rise from 1996-7, when less than 2,500 travelled to the South.

Between 1987 and 1999 the average annual flow of people from North to South was only 1,850, but there has been a sharp rise in recent years because of the job opportunities created by the 'Celtic Tiger' economy. The annual flow from South to North in the 1987-1999 period was 2,400.

For every year between 1987 and 1995 there was a net migratory inflow from the South to the North. Since 1996 this has changed and in three out of the last four years there has been a net inflow in the other direction.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers/Indecon report will be presented to the North/South Ministerial Council this summer and will be published later this year. The team of consultants will be present in Omagh to hear the views of the public, to respond to questions, and to discuss possible ways of overcoming cross-border obstacles and improving cross-border mobility. The meeting will be chaired by Mr John McKinney, chief executive of the Special EU Programmes Implementation Body and former chief executive of Omagh District Council.

These public meetings are part of a larger consultancy process which also includes: workshops and interviews with government, local authority and community/voluntary sector representatives; 81 organisations throughout the island of Ireland contacted for their views; advertisements seeking submissions in all border region newspapers; statistical research; individual and company case studies.

Further information from:

Dr Patricia Clarke, Centre for Cross Border Studies, 39 Abbey Street, Armagh BT61 7EB. Tel. 028(048)-3751-1550. Fax. 028(048) - 3751-1721

E-mail: patricia.clarke@qub.ac.uk