The Irish Sea Rim

The Irish Sea Rim is a unified, transnational Investment, Innovation, and Enterprise Zone based around the Irish Sea. Our purpose is to transform community co-produced economic and business growth and the development of world class collaborative research, through regional innovation excellence. The Irish Sea Rim will develop into an International, three-dimensional, multi-sector organisation and partnership network designed to deliver sustainable, inclusive economic growth and societal benefit across transnational boundaries while attracting increased inward investment.

The Irish Sea Rim encompasses three Nation States – the European Union (EU) member state of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the Isle of Man, and the regional governments of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This region has an estimated combined population of approximately 23 million people, GVA of approximately £940 billion, around 1 million businesses, and over 50 universities, with up to 1.2 million students and 130,000 academic staff.

The Irish Sea Rim has a coastal and maritime emphasis, centred around the key city regions of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol, Belfast, Dublin, and Cork, and the Isle of Man.

A key characteristic of the Irish Sea Rim is its combined economic power and potential. Together, the cities and regions which comprise the Irish Sea Rim both complement and create a significant economic and innovation counterweight to the concentration of London and the Greater South East as illustrated in Figure 1.2. This is despite receiving significantly less research and innovation investment (Section 14). As a unified economic zone, the Irish Sea Rim has a diverse and distributed portfolio of industries and world-leading research institutions, making it highly attractive to national and global investment and talent. In addition, through its climate and natural environment, the Irish Sea region is more resilient to the climate changes which threaten the security of London and the Greater South East.

The economic comparison should be viewed within the context of research and innovation investment. Traditionally, the Irish Sea Rim has received significantly less investment than London and the Greater South East (see below). Formally establishing the unified, cross-border Irish Sea Rim Investment, Innovation, and Enterprise Zone, and targeting investment into its industries and regions therefore creates an unprecedented opportunity for delivering non-linear returns on investment in terms of sustainable, inclusive economic growth.

Figure 1.2: High-level summary comparison: Irish Sea Region vs Greater South East

A NEW PARADIGM FOR REGIONAL GROWTH AND COLLABORATION

With the Irish Sea Rim, we are creating a groundbreaking new paradigm for place-based regional growth and collaboration, building a vibrant community that spans across waters, and bringing together over 23 million people in a shared vision of prosperity, collaboration, innovation, and investment. Operating as an umbrella organisation and portal for regional programmes, investment, and projects, the Irish Sea Rim can be framed as a model “Super Cluster”, and a practical pathway to catalyse place-based innovation, strengthen UK-Irish trade security, demonstrate values-led governance across devolved administrations, and drive community co-production.

ECONOMIC ENGINES / FORCE MULTIPLIER SUMMARY (LEAD TO SECTION BELOW)

PLACE AND COMMUNITY CO-PRODUCTION

The Irish Sea is a region of contrasts, encompassing a complex and diverse tapestry of communities, economies, and environments including major global cities, post-industrial towns, rural peripheries, and unique island jurisdictions, all bound by their proximity to a shared sea. The economic geography of the Irish Sea Rim is dominated by several powerful urban hubs that serve as the primary engines of growth and innovation. These cities have largely navigated the transition from industrial pasts to futures grounded in knowledge-intensive sectors, attracting investment and talent. The challenge is that the concentration of high-tech and high-finance sectors, while driving economic growth, often creates ‘islands of innovation’ which have only weak connections to local economies and can exacerbate regional economic inequalities. This creates a form of prosperity that may lack deep roots in place, creating a critical challenge for strategies aimed at delivering inclusive growth.

A significant percentage of places and communities that surround the Irish Sea are marginalised in a regional or national sense due to their geographical location and population size. These communities have an increasingly important role to play in supporting their more affluent and influential neighbours, yet often do not receive the benefit of economic, innovation or infrastructure investment as areas ‘outside’ the economic agglomeration cores. These places provide critical underpinning elements to urban communities, including energy, food, and water but often find that they have only a limited voice when it comes to influencing and creating new opportunities. As a result, these places receive only a fraction of the economic benefit created by the cities which they serve.

The Irish Sea Rim’s solution is to build the innovation ecosystem across a quadruple, rather than a triple, helix (Figure 1.3). Unlike most innovation organisations, we connect government, business, academia, and place (including communities and natural and built environments) across the six member countries through a holistic and inclusive approach, building cross-nation partnerships in a ‘Confederation of Enterprise and Place’. In doing this, the Irish Sea Rim will transform the way in which places and communities are included as equal partners in regional development.

This will support the Irish Sea Rim to deliver its twin goals of creating a sustainable, inclusive economic and cultural counterbalance to the Greater South East (London, East of England and the South East of England) and ensuring that economic growth benefits all communities and places around the Irish Sea. The Irish Sea Rim focuses on meaningful engagement, co-production, co-delivery, and impact generation with stakeholders and communities, working across several key social, economic, and industrial sectors (Figure 1.4), focussing on: Maritime, Green Transport and Blue Growth; Digital and Data economy and Defence; Energy and Net Zero Transition; Life Sciences and Health; and Sport, Wellbeing, and Regenerative Tourism.

In recent months, the authors have engaged actively with stakeholders across the Irish Sea region to understand priorities and co-develop this report. A list of key invited presentations and events is given below.

THE UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION FOR THE IRISH SEA RIM

The strength and uniqueness of the Irish Sea Rim lie in our neutrality and independence. We are an apolitical organisation which transcends political borders for a common purpose, enabling us to be agents of positive disruption and deliver economic growth and societal benefit in communities across the entire Irish Sea Rim. Our distributed funding model and regional locations mean we are not tied to any single government agenda, regional strategy, industry, university, anchor institution, or timeframe. We have created a vision for a shared common ground and are committed to working collaboratively with all parties who seek cultivate and build on that foundation.

We are a purpose and results-based organisation comprising strategists, innovators, and technical experts. We have track records in taking initiatives from concept to execution to impact across a wide variety of sectors, co-producing with stakeholders and user communities to generate powerful buy-in and meaningful benefits. Our flexible and adaptable structure gives us the ability to respond and deliver projects and programmes at the pace required by industry. Because of this, we have the vision and ability to apply policy, create buy-in and support from a diverse range of central- and place-based partners, and build the momentum needed to bring significant benefits to industry and places through increased socio-economic prosperity and sustainable, inclusive development across the Irish Sea Region.

OUR VISION AND MISSION, AND VALUES

The Irish Sea Rim is committed to working in partnership with communities and in balance with the environment. We aim to establish the Irish Sea Rim as a globally recognised exemplar of sustainable and inclusive economic development, where innovative industries and communities thrive in balance with natural ecosystems, while driving quantifiable, non-linear returns on investment.

We are a purpose-driven organisation, established on a foundation of principles and values (Appendices 1 and 2) which underpin and drive delivery of our objective to build on existing, and develop new collaborative projects across public, private, and third sector organisations, within and around the Irish Sea Rim. This mission will be delivered through research, innovation, business engagement, societal and community activities, and local and regional public engagement initiatives.

IRISH SEA RIM GOVERNANCE

The Irish Sea Rim has established an initial core leadership team who will drive the establishment of the initiative, engage stakeholders, and co-produce the initial projects with country leads and quadruple helix partners.

• Executive Director: Professor Phil Leigh
• Director of Innovation: Dr Jo Cresswell
• Director of Technology: Marco Rapaccini
• Director of Place: Sarie Mairs Slee
• Director of Commercial and Partnerships: Brendon Kenney

The Irish Sea Rim will work with the twin anchor hubs of Liverpool and Dublin to fully realise the opportunities and potential of cross-border collaboration between the UK and Ireland and support the conduit to and from the European Union. The shared and complementary expertise between the two city regions in maritime, tidal energy, and digital/data, combined with the proposed twinning arrangement and the opportunities presented by the Irish Sea Rim will create non-linear returns on investment and accelerate sustainable, inclusive economic growth across the whole Irish Sea region.

As outlined in Section 29 (Governance), we are in discussions with key organisations across the Irish Sea Rim countries to identify and establish individual country leads and Irish Sea Rim local officers who will sit on the Governance and Executive Boards respectively. Our commitment is to work with people based in country to ensure place-embedded knowledge and representation.

To ensure that the Irish Sea Rim is adaptable, efficient, fit-for-purpose, and cost-effective, our organisation is designed to be as lean as possible. Beyond a focussed core team, we will recruit Consultancy Associates and SMART project teams as needed to deliver on specific projects. This allows the Irish Sea Rim to grow organically and evolve as necessary to meet the needs of the region and its stakeholders, while delivering the maximum return on investment. Individual budget and staffing plans will be created for each project, as well as for the Irish Sea Rim as a whole.

Heysham Port and Heysham Nuclear Power Station. Image Credit: Irish Sea Rim