Ireland–UK Trade:
What the Bilateral Data Really Reveals
A data-led analysis of goods and services flows between Ireland and the United Kingdom – tracking bilateral trends from 2015 to 2025, the structural impact of Brexit, product composition, and how trade is distributed across UK nations and regions.
Originally published: April 2026 · Series: Enterprise Intelligence, April 2026
12 months to Q3 2025
with Ireland, 1999–2024
GB goods, 2024 vs 2023
export (highest in UK)
The UK is Ireland’s closest neighbour, largest food export destination, second-largest import source, and a market in structural transition since Brexit. This article draws on ONS, HMRC Regional Trade Statistics, and CSO data to map where the Ireland–UK trade relationship stands today – and how it has changed since 2015. The picture that emerges is one of a relationship that remains commercially vital, but that is visibly reorganising in response to new frictions, new supply chain choices, and a growing asymmetry between what Ireland sends to Britain and what Britain sends back.
The headline: Large, growing, but compositionally shifting
Total bilateral trade in goods and services between Ireland and the UK was £87.4 billion in the 12 months to Q3 2025, up 5% on the prior year. That makes Ireland the UK’s 6th largest trading partner overall, its 3rd largest export market, and its 9th largest import source. From an Irish perspective, Great Britain remains the largest trading partner for food and beverages, the most important source for energy inputs, and a top-three import origin overall.
Source: ONS UK total trade data (seasonally adjusted). DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026.
The composition of that trade has shifted markedly toward services. In the four quarters to Q3 2025, services represented 53.9% of UK exports to Ireland (£29.9 billion) and 41.8% of UK imports from Ireland (£13.4 billion). The services share of UK exports to Ireland rose 16.5% year on year in 2025, driven by financial services, other business services, and telecoms. Goods trade, by contrast, contracted on both sides in 2024.
This article draws on UK-reported data (ONS/HMRC) and Ireland-reported data (CSO) where relevant. The two are not directly comparable. The UK measures trade on a balance-of-payments (change-of-ownership) basis; CSO goods data is primarily on a physical movement basis. Values will differ due to methodology, timing, currency (sterling vs euro), and the treatment of goods that change ownership without crossing a border. The two perspectives together give a fuller picture than either alone.
25 years in context: 1999 to 2024
The current state of the Ireland–UK trade relationship is better understood against a longer backdrop. The ONS bilateral series runs from 1999, covering six distinct economic eras: the Celtic Tiger boom, the financial crash, the long post-crash plateau, the Brexit transition, the COVID shock, and the post-pandemic surge. Each left a visible mark on the data.
Sources: ONS UK total trade: all countries (seasonally adjusted). 1999–2014: House of Commons Library Research Briefing CBP-8173 (July 2022). 2015–2024: DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026.
| Era | Period | What happened to trade |
|---|---|---|
| Celtic Tiger boom | 1999–2008 | Exports grew from £14.2B to £29.7B – a doubling in nine years, driven by Ireland’s rapid economic expansion, construction boom and rising consumer spending. Imports grew more slowly as the UK remained a dominant supplier. |
| Financial crash | 2008–2010 | Exports fell sharply from £29.7B (2008) to £25.6B (2009). Uniquely, UK imports from Ireland rose slightly through the crash, as Ireland’s export-oriented pharma and food sectors continued operating while its domestic economy collapsed. The UK surplus narrowed. |
| Post-crash plateau | 2010–2015 | Exports stuck between £27–31B for five years despite Ireland’s recovery. The relationship stagnated in nominal terms as both economies grew but trade composition shifted. Services began to grow as a share. |
| Brexit transition | 2016–2020 | Exports rose sharply through 2017–2019, peaking at £41.9B in 2018, as trade accelerated ahead of anticipated Brexit disruption and Sterling weakened. The COVID shock hit both economies in 2020 but the goods impact was partly offset by stockpiling. |
| Brexit execution | 2021 | Exports held up (£41.6B) but imports from Ireland fell sharply to £23.9B – the lowest since 2010 in nominal terms. Irish goods importers began redirecting supply chains away from GB toward EU suppliers, a trend that has accelerated since. |
| Post-COVID surge & divergence | 2022–2024 | Total trade jumped from £65.5B (2021) to £83.5B (2022) – the largest single-year increase in the series. Inflation, supply chain rebuilding and a services boom drove the increase. Since 2022, goods trade has contracted while services have expanded rapidly. |
The most structurally significant event in Ireland–UK trade over the covered period is Brexit – specifically the end of the UK’s membership of the EU Single Market and Customs Union from January 2021. The data show two distinct effects: An immediate disruption in early 2021 followed by partial recovery, and a slower, sustained structural reorientation that continues to accelerate.
From the Irish perspective (CSO goods data)
Before Brexit, Great Britain was unambiguously Ireland’s largest or second-largest goods trading partner. It accounted for around 20% of goods imports and a meaningful share of exports. The post-2021 data shows a clean break in that trajectory:
| Year | IE exports to GB (€B) | IE imports from GB (€B) | Balance | Key dynamic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 13.4 | 18.2 | −€4.8B | Pre-Brexit baseline; GB ~20% of IE goods imports |
| 2021 | 14.4 | 15.4 | Near balance | Brexit kicks in Jan 2021; Irish importers begin rerouting to EU |
| 2022 | ~16.5 | ~21.0 | −€4.5B | Energy price inflation inflates GB import values; partial rebound |
| 2023 | 17.6 | 21.1 | −€3.5B | GB still 2nd-largest import source; exports stable |
| 2024 | 15.7 | 16.6 | −€0.9B | Exports −10%; imports −21% – supply chain shift accelerating sharply |
Source: CSO Goods Exports and Imports (December 2024); CSO Ireland’s Trade in Goods 2021.
Ireland’s goods imports from Great Britain fell by €4.4 billion in 2024 – a 21% annual decline. This is the sharpest single-year fall in the post-Brexit series. Multiple trade experts and the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce have attributed this to Irish businesses systematically replacing GB suppliers with EU alternatives. The pattern is structural, not cyclical: It has accelerated in each year since 2021.
Source: CSO Goods Exports and Imports, annual releases 2019–2024.
Several lines of evidence confirm this represents structural substitution, not temporary disruption. Irish importers have shifted away from GB suppliers for chemicals, food ingredients, and industrial inputs towards German, Dutch, Belgian, and French alternatives. GB’s share of Ireland’s goods imports declined from approximately 20% pre-Brexit to around 12% in 2024. This is consistent with what happens historically when a major trading partner exits a customs union: The friction of border checks, rules of origin documentation, and import declarations systematically raises the cost of sourcing from the departing member relative to remaining EU alternatives.
Product composition: What Ireland and the UK actually trade
The product mix of Ireland–UK goods trade is fundamentally different on each side. Ireland’s goods exports to Great Britain are dominated by food and pharmaceuticals. Britain’s goods exports to Ireland reflect its role as an energy supplier, pharmaceutical re-exporter, and provider of cereals and industrial goods.
Source: DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026; ONS UK trade non-seasonally adjusted.
UK goods exports to Ireland are led by pharmaceuticals (£2.8 billion, 10.8%) – medicines often manufactured in Ireland, processed further in UK facilities, and re-exported. Natural gas (£1.6 billion) and refined petroleum (£1.6 billion) reflect Ireland’s structural dependence on UK energy infrastructure: Ireland imports the majority of its natural gas via the UK pipeline system and is a significant importer of refined petroleum products from UK refineries. Cereals (£880 million) confirm the food and agriculture corridor, where Britain remains a major supplier of wheat and barley to Irish food processors.
UK goods imports from Ireland are heavily weighted towards food: Meat and meat preparations (£2.0 billion, 10.9%) and dairy products and eggs (£951 million, 5.1%). Ireland is the UK’s most important agri-food trading partner by proximity and volume – a relationship that has survived Brexit because geography, freshness requirements, and decades of established supply chains make substitution genuinely difficult for buyers. The pharmaceutical two-way flow (£1.6 billion UK imports from Ireland, up 23.3%) is growing. The sharp rise of telecoms and sound equipment (£811 million, +86% year on year) points to tech hardware supply chains, likely linked to data centre equipment flows.
| Category | Estimated value | ~Share of GB exports | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemicals & Related Products | €~4.5B | ~29% | Pharma intermediates, organic chemicals; Chemicals & Related Products is largest single SITC group to GB |
| Food & Live Animals | €~4.0B | ~25% | Meat, dairy, prepared foods; GB = Ireland’s largest food export destination with €6.5B food & beverages total |
| Machinery & Transport Equipment | €~2.0B | ~13% | Industrial and tech equipment |
| Beverages & Tobacco | €~1.0B | ~6% | Irish whiskey, beer, soft drinks – UK is Ireland’s largest whiskey export market |
| Other manufactured goods | €~4.2B | ~27% | Miscellaneous manufactures, raw materials, other SITC groups |
Estimated category breakdown based on CSO monthly product composition data for Great Britain corridor. Total goods exports to GB: ~€15.7B in 2024. Food & beverages total per CSO Ireland’s Trade in Goods 2024.
The services story: Where the UK holds its ground
While goods trade is declining, services trade is growing. UK services exports to Ireland were £29.9 billion in the 12 months to Q3 2025 – up 16.5% on the prior year, and now representing 53.9% of all UK exports to Ireland. For the UK, Ireland is its 3rd largest services export market globally.
Source: ONS UK trade in services by partner country (non-seasonally adjusted). DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026.
Other business services – covering professional services, management consulting, R&D, and technical services – is the dominant category at £16.8 billion (56.5% of UK services exports to Ireland), up 15.6% year on year. Financial services are second at £6.5 billion (21.8%), up 15.5% – reflecting the continuing role of UK banks, insurers, and capital markets in servicing Ireland’s highly internationalised corporate sector.
Ireland’s services exports to the UK are more diffuse: Other business services (£5.1 billion), transport (£2.1 billion, reflecting ferry services and transit freight), travel (£1.8 billion), and telecoms/IT (£1.4 billion). The transport figure is consistent with Ireland’s role as a transit point for Atlantic freight and confirms the sea lane between Ireland and Great Britain as an economically significant services corridor.
A services surplus of £16.5 billion with a country of 5.4 million people warrants explanation. It has two components – one partly illusory, one genuine.
The statistical amplification effect. The OECD’s Trade in Value Added (TiVA) analysis, cited in the UK government’s own core statistics book, finds that the UK appears to run a surplus with “transhipment hubs” like Ireland and the Netherlands in gross terms, but this turns into a deficit in value added terms. The reason: a large share of what registers as UK exports to Ireland – particularly financial services, professional services, and other business services – is not consumed by Irish entities at all. It is consumed by US multinational companies whose European operations are booked through Irish-domiciled subsidiaries. The Irish subsidiary pays the UK firm; the transaction records as a UK export to Ireland. But the ultimate economic beneficiary is headquartered in the US. The effect is measurable: in gross terms Ireland represented 8.1% of UK exports in 2022; in value added terms (actual final consumption), that share falls to 3.6% – less than half.
The genuine London-to-Dublin flow. The amplification effect does not explain everything. London is genuinely the primary capital markets hub, legal services centre, reinsurance market, and management consulting source for Ireland’s large corporate sector. When Irish companies – or the multinationals based here – need bond issuances, M&A legal advice, Lloyd’s insurance cover, or strategy consulting, they predominantly buy from UK firms. Ireland consistently ranks among the UK’s top three European destinations for financial and professional services exports. This component is real, structural, and growing.
FDI as the background condition. FDI is not a direct cause of the surplus, but is the structural reason the amplification effect is so large. It is precisely because so many US multinationals have chosen to domicile European operations in Ireland that so many inter-company service transactions flow through Dublin. The FDI creates the corporate structure; the corporate structure inflates the apparent trade surplus.
Trade across the UK: Four nations, four profiles
One of the most analytically rich aspects of the Ireland–UK trade relationship is the variation across UK nations and English regions. HMRC Regional Trade Statistics apportion goods trade to the UK region of the trading business, giving a picture of which parts of the UK are most commercially connected to Ireland.
HMRC allocates trade to UK regions based on the proportion of a business’s employees in each region, not on where goods physically cross a border. A London-headquartered company importing Irish pharmaceuticals is recorded as a London import even if goods enter via a Liverpool port. This means regional data reflects the economic geography of business decision-making, not physical logistics. Regional data covers goods only – services are not broken down by UK region in the same dataset. Northern Ireland data has additional complexity under the Windsor Framework due to its dual access to the UK customs territory and EU single market.
Northern Ireland: The most Ireland-intensive UK economy
Northern Ireland has the most distinctive trade profile of any UK nation or region in relation to Ireland. A remarkable 52% of businesses in Northern Ireland report having exported in the past 12 months – the highest export participation rate of any UK region – and 29% of those had exported only to the Republic of Ireland. Ireland is not just Northern Ireland’s largest export market; it is its defining commercial relationship.
Northern Ireland (£4.5 billion) is the single largest UK region for goods exports to Ireland, ahead of the South East (£2.7 billion) and London (£2.1 billion). This reflects both the geographic proximity of the land border and the concentration of island-of-Ireland food and agri-food supply chains in Northern Ireland. For goods imports from Ireland, NI (£3.6 billion, 20.0%) is also the largest single UK region – confirming the depth of cross-border goods integration.
Northern Ireland’s unique status under the Windsor Framework – maintaining access to the EU single market for goods while remaining within the UK customs territory – creates a complex but potentially advantageous position. NI goods exports to EU countries were £7.1 billion in the 12 months to September 2025, up 5.5% year on year. Its trade with the Republic of Ireland has grown in strategic significance since 2021, as businesses identify NI as a bridging jurisdiction for island-of-Ireland supply chains.
In total, NIETS data shows NI businesses exported £19.6 billion in goods and services in 2024, importing £11.2 billion – producing a trade surplus of £8.4 billion. Sales to GB (£20.1 billion) and exports outside the UK (£19.6 billion) are roughly equal, illustrating NI’s dual-market position.
England: Dominant in volume, concentrated in the South
England accounts for the large majority of UK goods trade with Ireland in absolute terms, but that trade is geographically concentrated. The South East and London are the two English regions with the highest goods trade volumes with Ireland, reflecting the location of major pharmaceutical company headquarters, financial service firms, and logistics and distribution hubs. In terms of goods imports from Ireland, the South East consistently records the highest values of any English region, as the location where import-intensive businesses are headquartered or registered.
Scotland: Energy and food as anchors
Scotland’s trade with Ireland is anchored in energy (gas and electricity via the Moffat interconnector and North–South pipeline), food and drink (agri-food exports, including whisky flows to Ireland), and sea freight via Stranraer-Cairnryan. Scotland experienced an export increase in the year ending September 2025 while most other UK regions fell – a divergence partly driven by energy export patterns and whisky reclassification. Scotland’s imports of goods from non-EU countries grew 9.3% in the same period.
Wales: Energy and industrial goods, a revision pending
Wales has an outsized role in UK–Ireland energy trade through pipeline infrastructure and energy generation assets. HMRC has noted a significant planned revision: Welsh goods export values for 2024 will increase by approximately 7.9% once petroleum and gas commodity reclassifications are applied, adding £1.4 billion to published totals. This correction disproportionately affects Wales because of its energy export profile. For the Ireland corridor specifically, Wales contributes industrial chemical exports and some agri-food flows.
Source: HMRC Regional Trade Statistics 2024 (provisional), as published in DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026. Note: HMRC data is on a physical movement basis, not directly comparable to ONS change-of-ownership data. Totals do not match ONS headline goods figures due to unallocated trade and methodology differences.
FDI: The investment dimension that underlies trade
Trade in goods and services is accompanied by a large and asymmetric stock of foreign direct investment. At the end of 2024, UK companies held £26.2 billion of FDI in Ireland (1.4% of total UK outward FDI), down 7.1% on 2023. Ireland-domiciled companies held £77.4 billion of FDI in the UK (3.6% of total UK inward FDI), up 15.1% in a single year.
What the data means for Ireland
- The UK remains Ireland’s most important agri-food trading partner. Food and beverages exports to Great Britain were €6.5 billion in 2024. For Irish farmers, food processors, and the agri-food sector, the UK market is irreplaceable at this scale in the short to medium term. Brexit friction (physical checks from April 2024) has not yet materially disrupted flows but is a live regulatory risk.
- Ireland’s dependence on UK energy infrastructure is structural and persistent. Gas imports via the UK pipeline network and electricity imports via the interconnector mean Ireland cannot quickly substitute for UK energy flows. This physical supply dependence is distinct from – and more durable than – the commercial import substitution happening in other goods categories.
- The services relationship is deepening, not weakening. Despite Brexit, UK financial and professional services exports to Ireland are growing at 15–16% annually. London’s role in servicing Ireland’s financial sector – as a capital markets hub, a reinsurance centre, and a provider of professional services – is robust. This is the most friction-resistant part of the relationship.
- Northern Ireland occupies a structurally unique position. The Windsor Framework’s dual-access arrangement makes NI a bridging jurisdiction for Ireland–GB supply chains. For companies managing cross-island supply chains, NI’s simultaneous access to both the UK customs territory and the EU single market for goods is a structural advantage not replicated elsewhere.
- Great Britain’s goods market share in Ireland is in accelerating structural decline. The 2024 data showed the sharpest fall yet (−21% imports). Unless post-Brexit trade frictions are meaningfully reduced, the directional trend points to continued displacement of GB suppliers by EU alternatives in Ireland’s import mix.
- The FDI relationship runs counter-directionally to goods trade. As goods trade contracts, the Ireland-in-UK FDI stock grows – £77.4 billion and rising. The financial relationship between the two economies is deepening even as the physical goods relationship narrows, pointing to an increasingly services- and capital-intensive bilateral relationship in the years ahead.
Data sources
This article uses the most current available data: the rolling 12 months to September 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), as published in the DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet of 26 March 2026. This is standard for UK bilateral trade statistics. Full calendar-year 2025 data will not appear in the DBT factsheet series until approximately mid-2026, because ONS annual trade data is published with a lag of roughly 12–18 months. The commodity-level product charts (top 5 exports and imports) follow the same October 2024 to September 2025 window. The bilateral time series (2015–2024) uses confirmed full calendar-year data, the most recent complete year of which is 2024.
1. ONS UK total trade: All countries, seasonally adjusted – headline bilateral goods and services flows.
ons.gov.uk
2. House of Commons Library Research Briefing CBP-8173 – UK–Ireland trade 1999–2021, sourced from ONS UK total trade. Used for the long-run chart (1999–2014 segment).
commonslibrary.parliament.uk
3. DBT Ireland Trade and Investment Factsheet, March 2026 – compiled ONS/HMRC data including commodity detail, regional breakdown, and FDI stock.
gov.uk – DBT Trade Factsheets
4. HMRC UK Regional Trade in Goods Statistics, Q3 2025 – UK goods trade by nation and English region.
gov.uk – HMRC RTS
5. CSO Goods Exports and Imports, December 2024 – Ireland-reported goods trade including GB and NI corridor detail.
cso.ie
6. CSO Ireland’s Trade in Goods 2024 – Key Findings
cso.ie – Ireland’s Trade in Goods 2024
7. NISRA Northern Ireland Economic Trade Statistics 2024
nisra.gov.uk
8. ONS Foreign Direct Investment Involving UK Companies (2024)
ons.gov.uk – FDI