What ‘Before the Vote’ gets right and wrong about welfare and living standards…

Chapter 3 of John Doyle’s Before the Vote: Planning for a united Ireland compares living standards, welfare payments and poverty in the two jurisdictions. Its evidence on basic payment rates is accurate, and many of those rates are much higher in the Republic. Its comparison of poverty rates, the figures most often repeated from the book, is weaker. It relies on Northern Ireland statistics that were revised downwards before the book went to press, and it compares poverty rates measured against different lines.

Living standards

Doyle reports that household disposable income was 18.3% higher in the Republic after adjusting for price differences. The figure comes from an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report published in 2025, which uses OECD data, adjusts for purchasing power and measures income per equivalised household, a measure that takes account of household size. The data year is 2018, which Doyle gives correctly in the body of the chapter, although his conclusion dates the gap to 2019 and he describes it as income “per person”. The ESRI notes that OECD data run only to 2018, so the figure cannot show the gap in 2026.

John FitzGerald and Edgar Morgenroth reached a different result by comparing consumption, which counts public spending such as health care as well as household spending. On 2012 data, they found living standards 20% higher in Northern Ireland, and on 2016 data, 4% higher. Doyle sets out their method and explains why he prefers income, including the size of the change over four years and the inclusion in Northern Ireland’s public spending of more than £1.5 billion a year allocated to UK defence. The second reason carries more weight, since a measure of living standards in Northern Ireland should not count spending on defence that takes place elsewhere in the UK.

What claimants receive

The payment rates in Doyle’s Table 3.2 match the 2026 rates published by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Republic’s Budget 2026 rates. A single unemployed adult aged 25 or over receives €254 a week in the Republic. In Northern Ireland the equivalent is £95.55 a week of new-style Jobseeker’s Allowance, or £424.90 a month of Universal Credit, about £98 a week. Doyle’s table labels the Jobseeker’s Allowance figure as Universal Credit, but the two are close.

The gap changes with circumstances. A qualifying lone parent with one child under seven can receive up to €344 a week in the Republic, made up of One-Parent Family Payment, the Child Support Payment and Child Benefit. One-Parent Family Payment stops when the youngest child turns seven, and a parent whose youngest child is aged 7 to 13 may move to Jobseeker’s Transitional Payment. Both payments are means-tested, and these are maximum rates. In Northern Ireland, the Universal Credit standard allowance, the child element and Child Benefit come to about £195, or €224 at the exchange rate Doyle uses. A full contributory State Pension is €299.30 a week in the Republic, compared with £241.30 (€277) under the new UK State Pension. Most pensioners in Northern Ireland receive the older UK State Pension, whose full basic rate is £184.90 (€212): in November 2024, 124,510 of the 325,350 recipients were on the new scheme. Many on the older scheme also receive Additional State Pension, so the basic rate is the floor of their entitlement, not the typical payment. These are payment rates for current pensioners; the OECD’s projections of how much of a full-career earner’s pay a pension system would replace measure something different, and depend on workplace and private pensions as well as the state pension.

For disabled people the comparison runs the other way. Doyle accepts that people with the highest needs may receive more in Northern Ireland. A single Universal Credit claimant aged 25 or over, first assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity on or after 6 April 2026, who is not terminally ill and does not meet the severe conditions criteria, receives the lower health element of £217.26 a month. With both components of Personal Independence Payment at the higher rate, that claimant receives about £343 a week (€393), before any housing support. The Republic’s Disability Allowance is €254. This is not a full comparison of disability support, because the Republic has other disability-related schemes with their own rules. The payments also do different jobs: Personal Independence Payment is paid towards the extra costs of disability whether or not the person works, while Disability Allowance is a means-tested income payment. The example shows that some claimants in Northern Ireland receive substantial help with the extra costs of disability, for which the Republic has no direct cash equivalent. In his chapter on planning for unity, Doyle describes disability support in Northern Ireland as “at least marginally better”. For those receiving the higher rates, the difference in cash is larger than that.

These figures are cash payments only. They exclude housing support and convert sterling at the exchange rate. Doyle notes elsewhere that the cost of living is lower in Northern Ireland, so the euro figures overstate the difference in what the payments buy.

Doyle says that housing support is similar in the two jurisdictions and gives no source. A comparison of support limits with average rents, though only a broad illustration, supports his claim. In Belfast, Universal Credit pays private rent up to the Local Housing Allowance of £155.77 a week for a two-bedroom home, about £675 a month, which is frozen for 2026/27. The average rent in Belfast in the first half of 2025 was £1,130. In Cork City, the Housing Assistance Payment limit for a parent with one child is €900 a month, which councils may raise by up to 35% to €1,215, while the average rent for new tenancies in early 2026 was €1,903. In both cities, the maximum support covers about three-fifths of the average rent. The rents cover all property sizes and periods, and tenants in the Republic also pay the council an income-based contribution.

Poverty

Doyle states that 17% of people in Northern Ireland and 11.7% in the Republic were in relative poverty, which he defines as having an income below 60% of the “national average (median)”. His conclusion adds that 25% of children in Northern Ireland are in poverty, against 14% in the Republic.

The two rates are measured against different lines. The Republic’s rate uses 60% of the Republic’s median income. Northern Ireland’s official rate uses 60% of the UK median, as NISRA’s poverty statistics and the ESRI study of child poverty that Doyle cites both state. Each figure shows how many people fall below a line drawn from a different income distribution. Neither shows how many people on each side of the border fall below the same standard.

The Northern Ireland figure has also been revised. On 26 March 2026 NISRA published its 2024/25 poverty statistics using administrative benefit records in place of survey answers, because the Family Resources Survey had under-recorded benefit income. NISRA says the change reflects “better measurement, not a change in peoples’ circumstances”. On the revised basis, relative poverty in 2023/24, the year Doyle uses, falls from 17% to 14%, and child poverty from 23% to 18%. For 2024/25, the figures are 12% and 15%. The CSO’s figures for 2025, published on 11 March 2026, put the Republic’s rate at 12.6% and its child poverty rate at 16.9%.

Both releases came out before the book went to press in June 2026, and the chapter does not use the revised figures. Because the thresholds differ, the latest figures cannot show whether poverty is lower in either jurisdiction against a common standard. They do, however, reverse the order the book reports: 12% in Northern Ireland in 2024/25 against 12.6% in the Republic in 2025, a figure based on 2024 incomes, and 15% of children against 16.9%. The child figures in his conclusion also compare unlike measures: 25% is Northern Ireland’s figure after housing costs, while 14% for the Republic comes from a different study. On the same after-housing-costs measure, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts child poverty in Northern Ireland at 19% for 2022–25, a three-year average on the revised data. The like-for-like figures in his own chapter, from the ESRI, are 21.2% and 14.6%. Doyle also reports an ESRI estimate that income inequality in Northern Ireland is similar to the Republic’s, within the margin of error.

Policy since

Doyle concludes that the election of a Labour government in 2024 “has not stopped” the long-term weakening of the UK welfare state. The record in 2026 is mixed. The Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act 2026 removed the two-child limit in Northern Ireland from 6 April 2026, a change the book does not mention. In the same month, the health element of Universal Credit was cut from £429.80 to £217.26 a month for most new claimants, and the Department for Communities applied the lower rate in Northern Ireland from 6 April 2026 under the Universal Credit Act 2025.

What unity would mean

Doyle’s chapter on planning for unity addresses some of these points. He proposes that National Insurance contributions count towards entitlement in the same way as PRSI contributions, that state pensions and child benefit move quickly to the Southern rates, and that a commitment could be made that no individual or family would be worse off after transition. That commitment is the right test, and a plan would need to say whether it would be permanent or would apply only during a transition. The disability case shows why that matters: Northern Ireland pays Personal Independence Payment to people in and out of work, and the Republic has no direct equivalent.

Doyle has shown that the Republic pays higher benefits to many categories of claimants. His poverty figures do not establish how much higher poverty is in Northern Ireland, or whether it is higher at all against a common standard. NISRA revised the Northern Ireland figures downwards before the book went to press, and on the latest figures the reported rate is lower in Northern Ireland than in the Republic, although each is measured against a different median. Unity would require two decisions the chapter does not take: what existing claimants in each group would receive, and how poverty would be measured once there is one median income for the whole island.

Sources:

John Doyle, Before the Vote: Planning for a united Ireland, Dublin: DCU Press, 2026 (open access): p. 29 (lower cost of living in Northern Ireland); pp. 63–5 and Table 3.1, p. 64 (18.3% gap; FitzGerald and Morgenroth; defence allocation); p. 67 (Table 3.2, payment rates; housing benefits and rent support “similar”); pp. 68–9 (disability support; poverty rates; ESRI child poverty figures of 21.2% and 14.6%); p. 71 (Gini coefficient); pp. 73–4 (conclusion: 2019, 25% and 14%, “has not stopped”); p. 138, note 1 (“going to press (June 2026)”); pp. 193–4 (National Insurance and PRSI; pensions and child benefit; “no individual or family would be worse off”; disability support “at least marginally better”).

Adele Bergin, Seamus McGuinness and Conor Banahan, Economic Overview of Ireland and Northern Ireland, ESRI Research Series 203, 2025, pp. 7, 15–16.

Department for Communities and NISRA, Northern Ireland Poverty and Income Inequality Report 2023/24 (threshold of 60% of UK median income; 17% and 23%) and Northern Ireland Poverty and Income Inequality Report 2024/25, published 26 March 2026 (administrative data; revised 2023/24 figures of 14% and 18%; 2024/25 figures of 12% and 15%).

Central Statistics Office, Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2025: Poverty, 11 March 2026.

Bertrand Maître, Helen Russell, Anousheh Alamir and Emer Slevin, Child Poverty on the Island of Ireland, ESRI Research Series 199, 2025, p. 8 (thresholds).

Christine Ellison, Sheena McMullen and Ursula O’Hare, Poverty in Northern Ireland 2026, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 19 October 2026, pp. 12 (after housing costs; three-year averages), 18 (19% of children, 2022–25) and 63–4 (revised administrative data).

Department for Work and Pensions, Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027. Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, Budget 2026 factsheet (rates from January 2026). Weekly equivalents of monthly Universal Credit amounts are calculated as twelve months divided by 52 weeks. Child Benefit: HM Revenue and Customs, Child Benefit, Guardian’s Allowance and tax credits: rates and allowances (£27.05 for the eldest or only child, 2026–27). Euro figures use the rate implied by Table 3.2 (£95.55 = €109.67).

Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Act 2026, section 2 (Northern Ireland), in force from 6 April 2026. Universal Credit Act 2025, section 6 (corresponding provision for Northern Ireland); Department for Communities, ADM Memo 4/26, April 2026 (lower LCWRA rate of £217.26 and higher rate of £429.80 per assessment period in Northern Ireland from 6 April 2026).

Housing: Northern Ireland Housing Executive, LHA rents 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027 (Belfast area, two bedrooms, £155.77 a week; monthly figure calculated as 52 weeks divided by 12); The Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Housing Costs (Executive Determinations) (Modification) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026, S.R. 2026 No. 2, made 8 January 2026 (rates fixed at those determined on 31 January 2024); Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Ulster University, Performance of the Private Rental Market in Northern Ireland, January–June 2025: infographic summary (Belfast £1,130, all property types); S.I. No. 338/2016, Housing Assistance Payment (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2016 (Cork City Council, one adult or a couple with one child, €900 a month); Dáil Éireann, written answer, 7 December 2023 (limits set in 2016; discretion of up to 35% from 11 July 2022); RTB and ESRI, The RTB Rent Index, Q1 2026, Tables 6–7 (Cork City €1,903, new tenancies, all property types); Department of Housing, Housing Assistance Payment scheme: tenant terms and conditions (weekly rent contribution under the council’s differential rent scheme).

Department of Social Protection, One-Parent Family Payment (payment stops when the youngest child turns 7; means test; Child Support Payment) and Operational Guidelines: Jobseeker’s Transitional Payment (youngest child aged 7 to 13).

Department of Social Protection, Operational Guidelines: Disability Allowance (means-tested payment).

Department for Communities, Benefits Statistics Summary, November 2024, p. 9 (325,350 State Pension recipients; 124,510 new State Pension). OECD, Pensions at a Glance 2025, chapter on net pension replacement rates.