Knowledge sector jobs could be game changer for North

BELFAST BRIEFING:HERE IS a question David Cameron has probably asked himself once or twice – how can I get Northern Ireland to reduce its dependency on the taxpayer?

It costs more than £8 billion (€9.26 billion) a year to keep Northern Ireland afloat.

Until recently, there have been few suggestions from the North about how it might move away from subvention to a state of economic independence.

The quiet consensus appeared to be one of burying heads in the sand and keep taking the money.

Not any more though – there is a desire in Northern Ireland to change the game plan, illustrated by two major initiatives.

First, there is the campaign to persuade the UK treasury to transfer power to set corporation tax rates to the North’s Executive.

This could bring tax rates into line with those across the Border and its promoters believe it could generate 90,000 jobs.

Next the team at NISP Connect, an independent, non-profit group that fosters entrepreneurship, has launched an initiative it says could help create 50,000 new jobs and put Northern Ireland’s economic future in “its own hands”.

NISP Connect – a collaboration between the Northern Ireland Science Park, the University of Ulster, Queen’s University and the Agri Food BioSciences Institute – says “knowledge” is the answer to some of Northern Ireland’s economic conundrums.

It argues the North’s current “knowledge economy” it much too small. Although it directly employs more than 30,000 people across 2,000 businesses, the research carried out shows it accounts for just 4.4 per cent of jobs.

The knowledge economy pays £1 billion in direct wages and indirectly supports 27,000 jobs in the wider economy. However, NISP Connect says this is a mere fraction of what the North’s knowledge economy could be. It has compiled a “baseline report”, based on research carried out by UK firm Oxford Economics, that looks at Northern Ireland’s knowledge economy and compares it to other regions and countries.

It says there is strong evidence that Northern Ireland has carved a strong reputation in specialist areas, from transport and defence to software and digital content, computing, electronics and life sciences.

According to NISP Connect, these offer the North a platform from which to build and broaden the local knowledge-led economy.

It also acknowledges there are a few fundamental challenges.

Not least is that research and development levels are lower than they should be when compared to leading “knowledge-intensive” regions. More worrying is that the venture capital market is “small and underdeveloped”.

Add in the fact that patent applications are low and linked to only a few major firms and it is clear Northern Ireland has its work cut out to create the right environment for a knowledge-led economy to flourish.

However NISP Connect has a strategy and it is pretty simple – copy someone else’s tried-and- trusted method. It wants Northern Ireland to mimic the approach that San Diego took when it created what is today a highly successful knowledge economy that accounts for 11.2 per cent of its local jobs and a quarter of the region’s wages.

It is now home to 6,000 technology companies, which employ almost 140,000 people.

Steve Orr, director of NISP Connect, says now it is time for action. “ . . . While we get significant return on the small investment that has gone into the knowledge economy to date, comparatively the capital flows into Northern Ireland in research funding, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions and public markets are far too low.

“Capital is the fuel of growth and is an absolute necessity for fast-growth technology companies and a growing indigenous private sector,” Orr adds. “Among other things this simply must be fixed.”

Knowledge based jobs, he says, tend to be well-paid – the annual wage in the sector is about £32,800 compared to the average wage in the North of £21,700.

So according to NISP Connect’s formula, if Northern Ireland were to succeed in fostering a new knowledge-based economy, it could deliver 25,500 more direct jobs in the knowledge economy; 6,000 more knowledge economy businesses; £800 million more spent on RD annually; 200 more PhD students per annum; 42,000 more science and tech graduates working in the economy; 200 more patent applications yearly; and 24,000 people employed elsewhere in the economy.

NISP Connect believes one of the fundamental prizes in creating a new entrepreneurial knowledge economy is that it creates the opportunity “for any kid with ambition and talent to make it big in Northern Ireland”. That alone makes it worth the risk.