qpr-1-2013-foreword.pdf | Page 53

Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, 1920-1932: A Comparative Study well as social) cost to the Dublin Treasury, now fiscally isolated from London and expected to bear the substantial reconstruction burden. Similarly the Parliament of Northern Ireland, though constitutionally subservient to Westminster, faced the significant task of reconstruction, imperial taxation and the unforeseen slump in Ulster’s staple industrial sector (Buckland 2001: 217). Unsurprisingly, fiscal retrenchment was the V6