Business banks on Assembly survival

Business leaders in the North are erring on the side of optimism this week.

The horrific events in New York seven days ago have focused the world's attention on the need for dialogue to arrive at solutions.

Nowhere is this more so than in Northern Ireland where the Secretary of State, Mr John Reid, will decide on Saturday either to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly or call for new elections.

Business is hoping for the best possible solution, according to Mr Stephen Kingon, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Northern Ireland and a senior council member of the Chamber of Commerce in the North.

"Nearly half of companies in the North say the Assembly has directly benefited their business over the past year. What's more, nearly 70 per cent of companies say the Assembly will deliver direct benefits to their business prospects over the next five years.

"That's a huge vote of confidence in devolution. The Assembly might have problems on a political level, but it has plenty of supporters in business," Mr Kingon said.

He said business people at this stage were not prepared to gamble on what would happen this weekend.

"We've been here before and the Assembly has survived. So, I'm not going to play the game of planning what to do after the Assembly dies. I'd rather focus on how to make it stronger and the way to do that is get the economy to the top of the political agenda," Mr Kingon added.

A former president of the Chamber of Commerce, he is one of a handful of key economic decision-makers in the North who have the ear of Government, North and South.

He has the same message for politicians, community leaders and fringe political groups: "Political stability is a prerequisite to economic growth in Northern Ireland. It is a bit like pushing water up a hill if we don't get that stability.

"People should be under no illusions that if we don't get that message out about stability then we have another burden in a very difficult environment," he said.

While he could be accused of being idealistic, Mr Kingon's feet are, in fact, firmly on the group. "Even if we had political stability and the clock ticking tomorrow, we would not see a major shift in the amount of inward investment into Northern Ireland for at least five years.

"We have to demonstrate stability. We have to be able to attract people and if you start to look at the time between first-time visits, project plans, projects in and jobs on the ground, there is a five-year gap.

"The world is not going to wait. The global competition that is out there is increasing and our window of opportunity will disappear so we need to get out and get on with it," Mr Kingon said.

Against this background considerable credit should be given for what has been achieved to date, he said. "Let's not underestimate what we have achieved. We have outperformed a number of other regions. We are getting more than our share of inward investment relative to our population size and we are getting more than our share of re-investment.

"However, the big problem now is international perception - we are not even on the radar screen for investment at times because the view is that we don't have political stability. Investors want to take political stability as read.

"It has been spelled out to us before that money will go where money is welcome, profitable and safe. We need to be able to convince investors that this is what Northern Ireland can offer," Mr Kingon said.

One of the key challenges facing Invest Northern Ireland, the new economic umbrella agency for the North, will be to get this message across.

"From a timing point of view it could not be worse for Invest Northern Ireland in terms of economic recession. We have already seen mobile foreign investment globally drop.

"They (the agency) also have the added problem of political instability within Northern Ireland. People need to understand that the politicians in Northern Ireland have a huge change management process to deal with.

"Invest Northern Ireland as a new economic development agency needs to manage the expectations of what it can achieve against the global background and our own specific problems," he said.

The new body deserves the support of both business and the wider community in the North.

"There are obviously some constraints in putting the organisation together, it is not starting off with a clean sheet, there are 600 people who are already employed in economic development agencies in Northern Ireland.

"However, I view Invest Northern Ireland as a three-year transition. The shadow board has some people on it who were involved in the previous agencies and some who were not, but it is good to have some continuity," Mr Kingon said.