{"id":236362,"date":"2025-07-04T03:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T03:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/236362\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T03:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T03:12:09","slug":"irish-unification-would-cost-e152m-annually-to-give-northern-irish-civil-servants-pay-parity-report-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/236362\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish unification would cost \u20ac152m annually to give Northern Irish civil servants pay parity, report says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The cost of paying for unification would be \u20ac3 billion in the first year and the need for a subvention from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/\">United Kingdom<\/a> would disappear after nine years, if not earlier, a new study argues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">The report, published on Thursday, is the result of research conducted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dublin-city-university\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dublin-city-university\/\">Dublin City University<\/a> (DCU) and the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre, partly funded by The Ireland Funds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">The cost of unification given in the report takes into account transfers from the Treasury in Whitehall, along with the cost of bringing wages and pensions in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/northern-ireland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/northern-ireland\/\">the North<\/a> into line with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/\">Republic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">The deficit in public finances would last for between five and nine years, depending on economic growth, but would gradually decline over that time, according to the report, authored by Professor John Doyle, vice-president for research in DCU.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">Bringing wages for public sector workers in the North into line with their better-paid equivalents in the Republic would cost taxpayers an extra \u20ac152 million per annum for 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">However, the costs of dealing with Northern public sector and state pensions would be a fraction of the costs estimated by others, requiring an additional \u20ac115 million per annum, over 40 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">\u201cIf Northern Ireland replicates growth of the best Eastern European economies between 2000 and 2023, its gross national income would reach the same level as the Republic in 25 years, but the fiscal deficit would end in year five,\u201d says the report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall\">The study describes itself as the first peer-reviewed report \u201cto calculate the cost of unity over the first 10 years which takes account not only of the subvention, but necessary investment and gradual economic convergence with the rest of the island\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cost of paying for unification would be \u20ac3 billion in the first year and the need for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[13515,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-236362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-common-ground","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114792781811909168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}