Debate contribution: Economic Trends on the Island of Ireland

Debate contribution by Mr David Honeyford on 26 January 2026.

MLA

Mr David Honeyford

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

26 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Economic Trends on the Island of Ireland

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5340347

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I came into the Chamber to debate a motion on growing our economy. We have just had minutes upon minutes of constitutional nonsense. I was at the launch of the ESRI report; I went to that because I wanted to hear about and see the trends. Too often, we do not have evidence on which to base policy and have mature political debate. The ESRI report gives us that factual baseline for understanding what our economy is doing, what is happening in the South, how we are performing, how we are succeeding and how we can grow. As I said last week, our economy in Northern Ireland is growing by 2·8%. That fact is in the report. That should be celebrated because it is more than double the average growth in the UK, which is growing at a rate of 1·3%. The reason for that difference in the rate growth is uncomfortable for the people sitting on my right, but it is because there is a difference in the situation here and that in the rest of the UK. Invest NI has said very clearly that we are growing our economy and seeing that difference because we have access to the two markets for the very first time. Equally, growth in trade with GB has increased in both directions, from just over £10 billion three or four years ago to £17 billion in the last financial year for which the figures were counted. Some 51% of trade is now with UK. Trade with the South has grown to 26%, and trade with the EU and the rest of the world has also grown. Those are all good news stories; it is not a choice between one or the other, as has been said. We should celebrate the good news because it brings better for ordinary people.

I have talked many times in the Chamber about sharing this island, collaborating North and South to grow opportunities, deliver better for people, break down barriers, make sure that people have better opportunities for skills, grow our economy, reduce our energy costs, put more money in people's pockets, improve our health outcomes and everything at the very beginning of what has been listed. Those are barriers to creating better wealth, better health outcomes and a stronger economy. That is just common sense. One colleague called it the common-sense alliance. We want better for people. I am not interested in a debate about the constitution; I am interested in making things better for people. If we are serious about that and serious about increasing and growing living standards, we need to start looking at what needs to change. When we start to look at that, we need to start making the changes and the reform. We hear the word "reform" used, and we talk about it all the time, but what does that look like? I was at the launch of ESRI's report in its offices in Dublin, and my question after the launch was: what do we do? Give me one or two things that we do to make a difference and to make a change. First, we have a problem because we left the EU, which was uncomfortable for some, and we do not have freedom of movement. Therefore, we have an issue with the number of people coming through to continue and sustain the growth of our economy. The second thing is that we have a skills gap in Northern Ireland. We do not have the link, which we have been talking about for quite a while, where businesses can input into how we develop and grow courses and skills. Education needs to reform. We cannot sustain 25,000 people under the age of 25 not in education, employment or training. That is not sustainable. We need reform without the cliff edges of what is happening in education, where people are basically in the dustbin very early in life. Outcomes in the South are much better. Those are changes that we can make. We also need changes in the North for Skillnet Ireland, which we have cross-community support for in the House. We need that brought through urgently. We need the Minister to start work on that to align the further and higher education colleges to the employment that we have on the island, North and South, so that somebody can live somewhere here and a job will be there for them when they come through training. Those are the changes and reforms that we need.

I am out of time.

758 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:23 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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