Companies carrying out business in Northern Ireland ignore the uniqueness of our legal system at their peril. It is dangerous to characterise our system here as some sort of hybrid of English and southern Irish law. The similarity is often great, but the devil is in the detail, as with so many things legal.

There is no better example of this than in the area of employment where, with so much legislation having its roots in the European Commission (EC), there is a great degree of common ground.