Debate contribution: Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland
Debate contribution by Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly on .
- MLA
- Mrs Emma Little-Pengelly
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 7 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5669791
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The Member will be aware that the Programme for Government sets out our desire for not just regional balance but regional prosperity. We want every part of Northern Ireland to be able to succeed and thrive. For example, I am pleased to have been able to get up to the north-west on a number of occasions for positive announcements such as investment in new offices, new jobs or businesses doing exceptionally well. I have been blown away not just by what I have seen when visiting there but by the ambition and positivity about the future. Everyone is saying the same thing, which is that they need the Northern Ireland Executive to work with them, particularly in relation to challenges around planning, the length of time that things take and our waste and water system. There is a huge elephant in the room when it comes to the investment strategy: the continuing implications of climate change legislation and the A5 case. That matter has been dragging on, and it will have potentially profound implications for the investment strategy. I had hoped that we would have got clarity before this point.
I have put a proposal to my colleagues in the Executive that we should move forward with urgent amending legislation that would unlock the big infrastructure that is currently caught suspended and postponed until the outcome of the appeal in that case. That is what is holding up that document, but I can advise the Member that the £32 billion worth of capital, as outlined in the draft investment strategy, is also contained in the various plans in Departments. The enabling actions are moving forward. Of course, at the heart of this is the fact that we need more capital to be able to spend on that much-needed big capital infrastructure, should that be for roads, for hospitals or for schools. That is the case that we have been making to the UK Government.
324 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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