Cross-Border Workers Coalition Update November 2020

Recent campaign progress

 The Cross-Border Workers Coalition has had continued engagement with political representatives in Oireachtas, the Northern Ireland Assembly and other stakeholders to build a strong coalition of support.

 During the recent Committee Stage of the Finance Bill in the Dáil, Pearse Doherty TD raised the issue and received a commitment from the Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe TD that the ‘Tax Strategy Group’ would consider this from a pragmatic point of view.

 Senator Emer Currie and Joe McHugh TD brought forward a motion on the issue to the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party. During this Paschal Donohoe TD again committed to get the Revenue Commissioner to consider this from a practical point of view.

 The Coalition were invited to feed into a forthcoming report on future working by Dr Cathal FitzGerald and the National Economic and Social Council which is an advisory body to the Taoiseach and the newly established Shared Island Unit. NESC intend to include the issues raised by the CBWC into their report.

 The Coalition recently met with the Joint Secretariat to the North South Ministerial Council, Mark Hannify who committed to highlight the concerns of the group once again to the Office of the Taoiseach, Department of Finance and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Next steps

 The CBWC will be continuing to engage with political representatives to ensure the commitments which have been made are followed through on.

 The East-West dimension in respect of tax and HMRC is something which we are intending to focus upon and will be increasing our engagement with the Northern Ireland Office, the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee and MPs. The CBWC will also be meeting with Invest NI to raise concerns of businesses in Northern Ireland.

 Continued media activity through press releases, reactive media opportunities and thought leadership pieces.

 Increasing social media presence – rolling out infographics and gifs etc to support campaign. We will be encouraging all CBWC members and those that are affected by this issue to get involved. Ends//…