{"id":11785,"date":"2021-04-30T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.economicsobservatory.com\/?post_type=question&p=11785"},"modified":"2021-05-01T18:01:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T17:01:50","slug":"northern-ireland-at-100","status":"publish","type":"question","link":"https:\/\/www.economicsobservatory.com\/test\/northern-ireland-at-100","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland at 100"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Newsletter from 30 April 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born in 1971, the year Northern Ireland turned 50. On 3 May, it will become a centenarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of my childhood and the first decade of my adult life, Northern Ireland was a country marked by destructive terrorist violence. Bomb scares, army checkpoints, riots, sectarianism and brutal murders were part of daily life. The statistics of the violence<\/a> make for grim reading: between 1969 and 1998, 3,720 people were killed, 47,541 were injured, 16,209 bombings took place and there were 36,923 shootings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind these statistics were real people such as a classmate from my school, who had just returned from his holidays and gone to get some groceries with his father: both were killed by a car bomb. Another young man, with whom I had played as a child, fell under the influence of paramilitaries, and was killed by the army when he opened fire on their checkpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terrorist violence also affected the rest of the UK, with bombings leading to loss of life \u2013 from a Birmingham pub to the Grand Hotel in Brighton to Harrods to Warrington town centre. Those days are thankfully well behind us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famine<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The deep roots of Ireland\u2019s partition and political violence can be found in the Great Irish Famine of 1845-52. This was a catastrophic event of biblical proportions. From a population of 8.2 million, one million people died and another million emigrated. The population of the island of Ireland, which today sits at 6.8 million, is still well below its pre-Famine level \u2013 see Figure 1 for this reflected in the European mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00c1ine Doran, Chris Colvin and Alan Fernihough of Queen\u2019s University Belfast have explored the legacy of the Famine, as well as lessons for policy-makers<\/a> today when it comes to dealing with catastrophic events such as famines and pandemics. Chief among them is that conventional wisdom and policy constraints should be ignored when dealing with catastrophic risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Famine, the British government provided insufficient support because it was shackled by economic orthodoxies and ideology. This inadequate relief effort set in motion the push for Irish independence. Perhaps herein lies the greatest lesson for policy-makers if they fail to do whatever it takes to address catastrophes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1: Population change in Ireland (versus the rest of Europe), 1840-2010<\/h4>\n\n\n
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