In a new series of blog posts we introduce the countries we are comparing regarding the role EU derived rights might have in them. Our overall aim being to develop a new socio-legal theory of European integration based on the practical usage of EU derived rights in the European society, we have selected eight smaller states (or parts thereof) for qualitative research, comprising Member States and neighbouring states from Northern, Western, Southern and (South) Eastern Europe. For the second entry in this series, we move to Ireland, where EU integration shaped the socio-economic landscape for the last decades.
The Republic of Ireland is one of the most recent State in Western Europe, gaining its independence from the United Kingdom in 1921. Its current Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, was adopted in 1937, but tensions with the UK regarding the status of Norther Ireland remained high all the way into the 1990s. As we covered in our previous entry on Northern Ireland, these tensions would reach their peak during the period known as The Troubles, and were put to rest by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
This created a border that divided the island of Ireland into two, with the sovereign state of the Republic of Ireland in the south, and the country of Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, in the North.
This complex relationship with the UK and the very sensitive quality of the management of its border with Northern Ireland have heavily shaped the conditions and extent of Ireland’s participation in the European Union. An interest in an Irish EEC membership had been expressed already in the 1960s, under Taoiseach Seán Lemass, when Ireland applied at the same time as the United Kingdom.
Indeed, despite very different motivations behind the application of each State [1], the EEC being a customs union meant both states had to apply together in order to avoid placing a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Moreover, the UK was (and continues to be) one of the main trading partners for Ireland, and the country was therefore dependent on the UK’s own rocky path to EEC membership. Two French vetoes to UK accession and one De Gaulle resignation later, the UK joined the EEC in 1973 – and alongside it, Ireland.
The complex and idiosyncratic relationship between Ireland and the UK continued to shape Ireland’s own position vis-a-vis the EU acquis and European integration. Just like the UK, Ireland opted out of the Schengen area, both maintaining their own “Common Travel Area” instead [2], with rights for Irish and UK citizens to move across their joint border and enjoy some socio-economic rights in the other jurisdiction. To this day, while the Northern Ireland/ Ireland border can (still) be crossed without checks, any traveler flying from Dublin to Paris, Athens or Ljubljana will have to go through border checks.
More importantly, it also means that Schengen visas, which allow third country nationals to travel and reside anywhere in the EU, do not extend to Ireland. This peculiar situation therefore affects not only the EU-derived rights nationals from other EU states would usually benefit from thanks to their EU citizenship, but also third-country nationals living in Ireland and the rights have access to. Even in a post-Brexit Europe, and with the European single market now a more important trading block than the UK, Ireland remains outside the Schengen Agreement.
EEC, then EU membership, shaped the Irish socio-economic landscape in more ways than through its relationship with the UK. Very well documented is how the EU acquis on gender equality led to a true legal revolution for women in Ireland. It allowed proponents of gender equality to obtain the end of the gendered pay scale, and of the “marriage bar”, a legislative provision whereby single women had to resign from their position in the public sector when they married, with equivalent social pressure if working in the private sector [3].
To comply with the EU’s acquis on the right to equal treatment of women and men, Ireland would have to end the marriage bar with the 1973 Civil Service (Employment of Married Women) Act, bringing women one step closer to equality in the workplace. Progress also took the shape of the Anti-discrimination Pay Act of 1974, which strengthened equal pay and granted paternity leave, and in 1977 the Employment Equality Act. Even the question of abortion -banned in Ireland until a 2018 referendum- had been brought up before the CJEU as a matter of economic rights (free movement of services under EEC Treaty Articles 59 and 60) with the 1991 Grogan case.
Ireland also rose as an economic powerhouse during the 90s and early 2000s – the Celtic tiger years. This is generally attributed to effective access to the single market, including the right to free movement of capital. This allowed Ireland to overcome what has sometimes been presented as a dependency to the UK’s economy [4].
However, this economic boom was followed by the catastrophic economic crash of 2007, where EU membership and participation in the Eurozone- would become a double-edged sword. Ireland had to be bailed out by a joint EU-ECB-IMF S85 Billions economic plan, tied to stringent austerity measures which left an enormous dent in the socioeconomic landscape. Yet, Ireland adhered strictly to this plan: the Celtic Tiger became the EU’s “poster child” [5] of economic recovery.
Benefitting from the free movement of people, services and capital, Ireland had also made a case for its International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) as a Special Economic Zone to the European Commission, keeping its dedicated 10% Corporate Tax Rate safe from the EU’s State-aid rules in the 80s. This initiative would shape Ireland’s knowledge-based economy for the decades to come. Phased on in the 2000s as European regulators refused to renew the emption a second time [6], it was followed by the adoption of a low corporate tax all over Ireland (dropped from 40% in 1995 to 12.5% in 2004), successfully attracting some of the world’s biggest companies in financial services, new technologies and digital platforms.
Many of these companies rely on a data-driven business model, such as Meta, Google, Twitter/X, or more recently TikTok, and other tech industry giants such as Apple, IBM, Oracle or Dell. This is a reflection of the reshaping of the Irish economy toward being knowledge-, services- and technology-based. One of the results of this shift is the frequent alignment of Ireland’s policy positions in the EU with the interests of these transnational companies.
This has often led to tensions with other EU policies and Commission decisions when the Commission started cracking down on GAFA and the tax breaks they benefitted from, under Vestager’s mandate as the Commissioner for Competition in the 2010s. This is exemplified by the Apple Tax case where the EU Commission ordered Ireland to collect €13 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple, a decision upheld by the CJEU in September 2024.
Additionally, this boom of the tech sector in Ireland coincided with a rising judicial activism from the CJEU regarding digital rights, which started to develop a true EU digital constitutionalism [7]. Course-altering cases such as Digital Rights Ireland, Schrems I and Schrems II, all originated in Ireland, where domestic courts clearly do not shy away from taking an active role in the development of EU fundamental digital rights [8].
So after all this, why Ireland in Rights-to-Unite? Because Ireland offers multiple rich opportunities to understand the role and place of EU-derived rights in societal (dis)integration, in both cross-border and non-cross-border contexts.
Beyond the inherently interesting features of Ireland which have been presented above, Ireland offers an interesting point of comparison with our other case-study, Northern Ireland, which has recently gone from part of an EU Member State to part of the EU’s Neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Ireland is still a full-blown Member of the EU, falling under its primary and secondary law, with individuals benefitting from EU-derived rights that originate in pure EU law, as opposed to EU-derived rights for the EU’s neighbourhood law and policies.
Moreover, beyond this comparative approach, the proximity to Northern Ireland and the UK itself is of interest, as the cross-border region between both countries is now organised under a very idiosyncratic legal entanglement of the UK Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol/Windsor Framework – a true legal and geographical borderland [9]. There is great value in exploring how these more ad hoc arrangements with the EU’s neighbourhood affect the role, use or non-use of EU-derived rights on either side of the border. What happens when EU Law and EU Neighbourhood Law meet and mingle in a single space? What does it mean on the ground, for people’s rights-mediated interactions with each other?
Lastly, Ireland has often been framed as a success story of European integration: from a state dependant on the UK’s economy to the Celtic Tiger years, from an era-defining financial crash to the technological hub of Europe. Yet, recent years have shown a shift in the Irish political landscape. Referendums on successive EU treaties have seen an erosion in participation, and a rejection on the first try for both the Treaty of Nice in 2001 and the Treaty of Lisbon in 2008.
It is facing one of the worst housing crises of the EU, which has fed into a quiet but steady rise of far-right movements, anti-immigration rhetoric and riots that rocked Dublin in 2023. A lot, for a country which was long said to be fully immune to the global-scale rise of far-right parties [10]. And yet, there is consensus to agree on the lack of Brexit effect in Ireland.
There is no true Irexit movement, and in polls, attitudes toward the EU remain positive [11]. Ireland’s relationship with the EU and EU integration, its reception and internationalisation of EU rights, its inherent complex relationship with the borders and borderlands of the EU legal system, all make it a fascinating case study for Rights to Unite to investigate.
[1] Schiek, D. (2018). Brexit on the island of Ireland: beyond unique circumstances, Norther Ireland Legal Quarterly, 69(3), 367-395, https://doi.org/10.53386/nilq.v69i3.174
[2] Davies, G. (2021). Facilitating Cross-Border Criminal Justice Cooperation Between the UK and Ireland After Brexit: ‘Keeping the Lights On’ to Ensure the Safety of the Common Travel Area. The Journal of Criminal Law, 85(2), 77-97. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022018320977528
[3] Foley, D. (2022). ‘Their proper place’: women, work and the marriage bar in independent Ireland, c. 1924–1973. Social History, 47(1), 60-84
[4] Bielenberg, A., & Ryan, R. (2012). An Economic History of Ireland Since Independence (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203094952
[5] Roche, William K., Philip J. O’Connell, and Andrea Prothero, eds. Austerity and Recovery in Ireland: Europe’s Poster Child and the Great Recession. Oxford University Press, 2016.
[6] White, M. C. (2005). Assessing the role of the international financial services centre in Irish regional development. European Planning Studies, 13(3), 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310500089365
[7] Giovanni De Gregorio, The rise of digital constitutionalism in the European Union, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 19, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 41–70, https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moab001
[8] Rodger B, Maher I, Riordan R. A decade of EU law in the courts of Scotland and Ireland: national legal systems compared. Legal Studies. 2021;41(2):311-335. http://doi:10.1017/lst.2020.46
[9] Evrard, E. (2022). Reading EUropean borderlands under the perspective of legal geography and spatial justice. European Planning Studies, 30(5), 843-859.
[10] O’malley, E. (2008). Why is there no radical right party in Ireland?. West European Politics, 31(5), 960-977.
[11] Simpson, K. (2021). National interest and public interest: public opinion from the economic crisis to Brexit. In K. Simpson & M. Holmes (Eds.), Ireland and the European Union: Economic, political and social crises (pp. 103–119). Manchester University Press.