evidence: Economic comparisons between Northern Ireland and the Republic are few and far between. For some reason, perhaps because of the zero-sum politics involved, we tend to shy away from benchmarking the North's economy with the Republic's or vice versa. The North is typically compared with the rest of the UK while the Republic is viewed in the context of EU norms and averages. [...] The gap was primarily down to higher levels of government consumption in Northern Ireland reflecting superior public services such as health. The Republic just also happened to be in the middle of postcrash EU-IMF bailout programme. [...] It found that productivity per head in the North had deteriorated relative to the rest of the UK in recent decades and even since the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Many commentators attribute the North’s low productivity to the Troubles, but its productivity had been waning prior to that period. That’s why it has become reliant on subvention from London. That wasn’t always the case. In 1935, Northern Ireland was a net contributor to the British exchequer.