CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

The aim of this package of four closely inter-related research projects is to find ways of understanding and increasing the accessibility, size, transparency, competitiveness and profitability of Irish border region markets in a context where peace and normality have finally arrived in Northern Ireland and the Southern Border Region. The added element of an international economic recession has been added since the application was first written in 2007. This overall project – in which the Centre will be partnered by InterTradeIreland – will begin in autumn 2009. Tenders for research applications will be issued in early summer 2009.

The four constituent research projects will be:

1. The specific challenges the region faces due to its peripheral location, with an exploration of how it might become less peripheral through new business communication technologies, optimal use of supporting institutions (including higher education institutions) and the experience of more advanced border regions elsewhere in Europe.
2. How border region retail and wholesale markets might be made more efficient drivers of regional growth (and more robust in the face of currency changes) in the longer-term.
3. How the micro-enterprises (with under 10 employees) which are the mainstay of so much economic activity in the region might be enabled to expand by exploiting increased access to larger cross-border markets on their doorstep (and to learn from the experience of successful ‘niche’ producers in other parts of Ireland and Europe).
4. How the region's tourism 'product' (including 'green tourism') might 'dovetail' with strategic plans for tourism in Ireland as a whole, and how border towns might learn from 'good performers' elsewhere on the island to bring more visitors to the region.

See the first Progress Report.