Brexit and Northern Ireland: Reading List #13 – approaching the endgame?

Please note: This version of the Brexit and Northern Ireland reading list has now been superseded. For the very latest version, please see here.

The Assembly’s Research and Information Service (RaISe) has just published a thirteenth version of Brexit and Northern Ireland: A Reading List. These have been produced for over a  year now and they are a key component of our Brexit and Northern Ireland hub, which aims to provide a range of relevant information to inform scrutiny of the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.

As the process approaches its conclusion, relevant output from Governments, legislatures, interest groups, think tanks, academics and journalists has snowballed into a vast body of analysis and comment. While much of this is pessimistic or questioning about the prospects for Brexit, the list includes coverage of ‘pro-Leave’ sources such as BrexitCentral, Briefings for Brexit, The Bruges Group, Policy Exchange and Politea.

The focus of the reading list continues to be on the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland in particular, but with the addition of selected material covering developments in neighbouring jurisdictions.

In addition to a constant flow of information from sources like the House of Commons Library, the Centre for Cross Border Studies, the Centre on Constitutional Change, Euractiv, the Institute for Government, The London School of Economics,  QPOL – Policy Engagement at Queen’s, Slugger O’Toole and The UK in a Changing Europe, key additions in this latest release include:

• The latest NISRA EU Exit Analysis findings providing an overview of trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain;
• A series of six Policy Reports from BrexitLawNI covering the peace process, North-South relations, border controls and free movement, xenophobia and racism, socio-economic rights, and wider human rights and equality issues;
• A detailed study by the European Parliamentary Research Service on The future partnership between the European Union and the United Kingdom: Negotiating a framework for relations after Brexit
• Further additions to The Department for Exiting the European Union’s Guidance on how to prepare for Brexit if there’s no deal collection; and
• Brexit & the Irish Border: Key info in 11 slides by Dr Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast, along with her analyses of, and Explainer on, the European Research Group’s recent report.

At the same time, bodies which produced Brexit-related comment and analysis in the period immediately following the referendum now appear to have shifted their focus elsewhere – the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, the Human Rights Consortium, the Nevin Economic Research Institute, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the Royal Irish Academy and  Ulster University, for example.

In addition to this reading list, our own Brexit Hub also provides access to the research papers which RaISe has produced thus far on the subject, a selection of articles from our Research Matters blog, and relevant briefings and presentations from our Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series. The Brexit Hub also draws together useful resources produced by others, including the hubs and blogs of other organisations, and details of forthcoming events on Brexit and Northern Ireland.