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A sense of proportion in crossbordershopping: what the mostrecent statistics showEoin Magennis, Steve MacFeely and Aidan GoughSince late 2008 the issue of cross-border shoppinghas been a favourite topic of media interest andspeculation. Stories emerged around Christmas2008 about ASDA in Enniskillen being the sixthtop performing store in the global Wal-Mart chainworldwide. 1 Around the same time Irish Minister ofFinance, Brian Lenihan, made the comment that‘people should do their patriotic duty’ and shoplocally rather than across the border. 2 The responsefrom the retail industry lobby groups, North andSouth, has fed the story. One claim was that every150 cross-border trips costs one retail job in Ireland.Contestable, headline grabbing statements such as‘British shops’ war on Irish’, and ‘Shoppers goingNorth are not traitors’ fuelled misguided perceptions. 3Unfortunately, much of what has been written is basedon an imprecise extrapolation from small sample-basedsurveys and anecdotal evidence from shop owners. Inthe absence of robust statistics, a sense of perspectiveon cross-border shopping was in danger of being lost.Eoin MagennisSteve MacFeelyAidan GoughIn February 2009 the Office of theRevenue Commissioners and theCentral Statistics Office (CSO) in theRepublic published a report entitled TheImplications of Cross Border Shoppingfor the Irish Exchequer. The reporthighlighted the ‘significant difficultiesassociated with quantifying the extent ofcross-border shopping and estimatingthe implications for the Irish exchequer’and recommended that the best wayto measure the loss in Irish tax revenuewould be a survey of cross-bordershoppers.As a result, a module on cross-bordershopping was included on the QuarterlyNational Household Survey (QNHS) inJOURNAL OF CROSS BORDER STUDIES IN IRELAND No.547
the second quarter (April to June) of2009. 4 One member of each householdin the Republic answered questions onbehalf of the household about travelto Northern Ireland in the previous 12months and specifically about shoppingin Northern Ireland. The questions onshopping in Northern Ireland focussedon how much households spent, thefrequency of shopping trips and whetherthis had changed in the previous year.The survey also asked about intentionsfor shopping in Northern Ireland in thefollowing year. As a result, we are now ina position to take a more informed viewof cross-border shopping from Irelandinto Northern Ireland.Key FindingsHow many and how often?According to the Quarterly NationalHousehold Survey, 16% of the Republicof Ireland’s households made at leastone shopping trip to Northern Irelandin the 12 months before the secondquarter of 2009. Looking only at the16% of households who shopped inNorthern Ireland, the average numberof trips was 6.7 (equivalent to just overone for every household in the Republicof Ireland).The highest proportion of householdswho shopped in Northern Ireland was,as might be expected, recorded in theBorder region (41%). There was then agap to the next nearest regions: the Mid-East (22%), Dublin (21%), the Midlands(18%) and the West (14%).Unsurprisingly, below a line fromWicklow to Galway the costs oftravelling or lack of market knowledgebecame an inhibitor, with a significantdrop to fewer than 5% going to shopin the North. In individual regions thisfigure was even lower: 4% in the SouthEast; 3% in the Mid-West and 2% inthe South-West. It is noteworthy thatresults from the Household Travel Surveyidentify the same pattern, with mosttourism traffic into Northern Irelandfrom counties north of the Wicklow-Galway axis.In terms of whether or not there hasbeen a sudden upsurge in cross-bordershopping activity from the Republicto Northern Ireland, the QNHS tellsus that in 2008-2009 only one in tenhouseholds did more cross-bordershopping than in previous years.In terms of intentions for the year 2009-2010, 78% of respondents did notintend to cross the border to shop, while14% would occasionally go for ‘onceoff’purchases and 7% more regularly.Regular cross-border shoppers tended,again not surprisingly, to be from theBorder region, with almost one quarter(23%) of households from the Borderregion intending to shop regularly inNorthern Ireland.There is a similar regional variation in thefrequency of trips. Of those householdswho shopped in Northern Ireland, thosein the Border region travelled morethan once a month (14.4 trips in the12 months). None of the other regionsrecorded frequencies of higher than fivetrips, with travellers from the far southcrossing the border only twice to shop.How much?The Quarterly National HouseholdSurvey estimates that the total Irish48JOURNAL OF CROSS BORDER STUDIES IN IRELAND No.5
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BOARD MEMBERS AND STAFFDr Chris Gib
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EXTRACTS FROM 2008-2009 FINANCIAL S
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