A Lucid Talk poll has surveyed residents of Northern Ireland’s attitudes towards travel restrictions. As some of you have become aware there has been a topic of growing debate as the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish government disagree over the level of cooperation between the two administrations.
For those of you needing a catch up, the Irish government have since the new year started messaging their support for an all island approach for travel restrictions but the politics in this part of the world is the barrier.
This new polls has some interesting results, here are the headline figures. 90% of people surveyed within Northern Ireland support the concept of a two island approach. Interestingly the UUP registers the highest no share of those who would be opposed to the idea.
The really interesting results are in the question about restricting travel outside of the island of Ireland. A strong 65% of those asked support the idea. This includes more than one third of DUP and UUP voters. 84% of Alliance back the proposal, but it should be noted that is lower than those who support the two island approach.
Analysis
This poll shows strong support for policies such as hotel quarantine. This policy which has been in place in Australia (who are not following zero COVID) has been regarded as a general success. One wonders why it has taken 10 months for policy-makers and the debate here to catch up. Instead of being hypnotised by stop/start approaches on one side and people thinking all we need is Jacinda Ardern to arrive here, there are concrete things we can do, like Australia. When we catch up on the hotel quarantine, leaders here should also Google, the National Cabinet that exists there. It brings the Federal Government together with the state governments. They disagree, it isn’t always a happy experience but having the Prime Minister in a room with state premiers regularly helps get issues resolved, rather than drift.
With a 90% support for two island solution, this is where we will land, but we need to use the infrastructure that is there to make it work. The British-Irish Council could be our version of a National Cabinet (or international I suppose). The public are there in terms of the debate, we just need the policy-makers to catch up.
David McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
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