There was another great quote from one of our commenters recently, that ran (and apologies for paraphrasing): ‘there is no shortage of people looking for power, but they all disappear when it comes to taking responsibility”. The nine year talking shop in Stormont has done little to address the ebb and flows of the local economy, though there is no shortage of constitutional arguments of over same. The Newsletter today notes that despite Invest Northern Ireland spending “over £400 million was spent supporting economic projects between 2002 and 2005 while overall employment in its client companies dropped by 4,700”.
An agency spokesman said the drop in employment in its client companies was due to the huge fall-off in employment of around 50 per cent in the manufacturing sector, in particular textiles, adding that similar falls were recorded by Enterprise Ireland in the Republic and other UK agencies. Without the job creation efforts, he said the situation could have been worse.
“There are clearly many factors which influence the performance of our clients, only one of which is assistance received from Invest NI,” said Mr Morrison. “We acknowledge that further work is required to understand better the connections between our interventions and their consequences.”
Check earlier economic stories on Slugger.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty