Why is the UK helping Ireland?

This was a question posed this morning by one of my year 12 students and led to an interesting class discussion as to whether we should indeed be lending the Irish £7 billion. I’ve now found a BBC news video which will illuminate this topic further…

Key arguments put forward by my year 12’s involved the close inter-relatedness of our economies, a key point touched on in this video, although I did stoke the controversy by considering the idea of opportunity cost, what could we do with this money instead? (although, of course, this is only a loan- hopefully!)

Hugh Pym from the BBC points out that UK exports to Ireland include financial services, food, paper, petrol and gas. And 40% of Northern Ireland exports go south of border. Ireland is the UKs fifth largest export market, above Spain, Italy and China.