Debate contribution: Subregional Economic Plan

Debate contribution by Mr Conor Murphy on 1 October 2024.

MLA

Mr Conor Murphy

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

1 October 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Ministerial Statements

Heading

Subregional Economic Plan

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4562322

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Member is out of Downpatrick too long. He has forgotten his roots. Belfast will continue to be the economic driver for the region; there is no doubt about that. The priorities will be a matter for partnerships to decide. We will not impose an economic plan on an area. Too often, Departments headquartered in Stormont and elsewhere have developed policies that have been delivered down to people. The new strategic approach is about reversing that. It is about local areas having some resource and having their capacity built so that they can decide their own economic priorities. If people think that the priority for an area is to have transport connections to Belfast, we will be glad to hear it, and I am sure that we and DFI will be prepared to engage with them. I am not being prescriptive; it is for each area to decide its priorities. Of course, as I said, Belfast will be involved. My suggestion is that people focus on areas of greatest economic need in Belfast and the surrounding urban areas, but that will be a matter for them. I sincerely hope that they do so.

Clearly, Ulster University has a regional presence with the Magee campus and the Coleraine campus. We also have a strong network of regional colleges that have close links with our universities. We want to see community providers, regional colleges and universities, including the Open University, which I had the opportunity to meet yesterday, working seamlessly together to provide skills and educational opportunities. That will be key, because, whether through a regional balance approach or in general terms, our big challenge in growing the economy is in people and skills. We have priorities, but that is the overarching challenge for all of us. We need to make sure that our skills, our educational facilities, our further and higher educational facilities and our Open University work in tandem to deliver support across the entire region. Whether they have a physical presence outside Belfast, they have a presence through their support for and engagement with the regional colleges and other skills providers. We need to see that working seamlessly.

Councils are made up of elected councillors and, obviously, that dictates the balance of power across the council area. I am not sure that we will get too prescriptive: we want to see genuine partnerships that tackle the issues relating to the areas' economic priorities. There is a danger in trying to decide everything and micromanaging this rather than trying to give a steer in a genuine partnership approach across the priorities that we have set. That will be one of the measurements used in respect of how we allocate resources. Regional balance is one of the priorities, and I assume that that means within councils. We have set priorities, and, in that framework, I anticipate that we will get the best and fairest outcome for the people who live in whatever area the partnership is responsible for.

This is not simply about local councils. Councils have an economic development responsibility. One of the difficulties is that some councils have been much more active in that space than others, so we want Invest and our Departments to make sure that we support people to build that capacity for them. It will be about partnerships. If people decide what their economic priorities are — it could be the acquisition of land for further business development — we will work with them and see ways of supporting them. Invest will have a land strategy to make sure that it has more land available across the region for economic growth, because that has not been the case to date. It is about the partnership deciding what the priorities are. My Department will then provide support and, given our broad commitment in the Programme for Government, invite other Departments to look at what support we can give to make happen the things that people have identified as key issues in their area.

In support of good jobs, we will legislate on employment rights. We have already been working through that, and the consultation closed yesterday. We want to make sure that the jobs that we have work well for the people who are in them and that we end the unfortunate exploitation practices in relation to jobs. We want to see economic growth across the region, but we also have to recognise the persistent problem in that, to date, that growth has been imbalanced. That has been due to a range of historical factors, infrastructure factors and investment decisions. We have to take measures to address that. We also recognise that, in urban areas, there are imbalances and areas of deprivation that need support. They should continue to be supported. This is not a single answer to all those issues. It is about strengthening the local economic voice, allowing areas to articulate their needs and trying to ensure that whatever money Departments spend in an area is spent in the knowledge that it is being invested in priorities that the local community has identified. In that way, we will get a much more efficient spend and a spend that will have much more consequence in lifting areas, particularly areas that have been deprived for too long.

It will more likely be redeployment, but it is not simply about putting people into offices, because that, in itself, will achieve nothing. This will be about changing the mindset regarding regional presence. The focus of the people who go there will be on working with the people in the area to articulate the local economic need; it will not be on representing Invest NI's views to the area. It is also about the organisation and how its headquarters will recalibrate what it does and how it does it. Teams in Invest's headquarters will work on the issue of regional balance; the responsibility for that will not simply be farmed out to local offices to let them carry it. There will be more staff and a different approach from the organisation itself.

1,013 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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