The All-Island Labour Market and its effective operation for Workers and Businesses

A team of researchers have been appointed by the Labour Employment Economic Forum (LEEF) through the Shared Island Unit (Department of the Taoiseach) to review the current conditions of the island of Ireland labour market, and challenges and opportunities for effective operation for workers and businesses across the island.

The purpose of the research is to provide an updated evidence base and analysis, including select case studies, of the current all-island labour market conditions with a specific focus on the following factors in both jurisdictions and their impacts on the operation of the labour market across the island:

• personal taxation,
• pension entitlements and portability,
• social welfare systems,
• qualifications,
• skills,
• cross-border worker mobility,
• the changing world of work (i.e., remote / hybrid working), and
• collective bargaining and trade union coverage

With the aim to test findings in terms of themes. This may include, for example, competitiveness, sustainable job creation and the labour market.

The team includes Maureen O’Reilly who is an independent Economist, Annmarie O’Kane who leads the Border People project with the Centre for Cross Border Studies, Seamus McGuinness and Anne Devlin from the ESRI and Rose Tierney, a cross border accountant and tax specialist.

Your Participation

We are very keen to include a dedicated workshop with businesses from both jurisdictions as part of the research to discuss any issues that have arisen and continue to that affect business’s ability to recruit people from both sides of the border. We envisage that the event will last 1.5/2 hours and we are very grateful to Seagate for hosting it.

The main aims are to understand the issues, discuss the implications and whether a solution has/can be found to them. The research also includes several case studies so these discussions will also be used to inform what they might be.

Your involvement in this event would be much appreciated.

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