evidence: In parallel, participants from the Republic were often poorly informed on the impact of public spending cuts on health and welfare in Northern Ireland. They had limited knowledge of the gendered impacts of the severe cuts to welfare and health spending by Conservative governments at Westminster between 2010 and 2022 that reinforced the Thatcher-era cuts in welfare provision. There was no awareness of the crisis in the NHS, or of the low level of social welfare payments, or that Northern Ireland is now one of the poorest areas in the UK, with the worst health service provision. Comments on assumed welfare provision and its gendered impact in Northern Ireland were often based on a very dated view of the British welfare state, and an assumption that it still provided Northern Ireland with higher standards of health and welfare than the Republic.