Platform Piece on Manufacturing by Cllr Mark Cosgrove
Following the recent body blow in Antrim with the loss of 200 jobs at Daewoo it once again has brought Northern Irelands manufacturing competitive edge into very sharp focus. When members of the Northern Ireland Manufacturing Group have mentioned figures of 30,000 job losses if Industrial DeRating is abolished, there were noticeable chuckles of disdain in some senior government circles. I think that these people miss the point. The outworking of this illogical policy will take around 10 years to be fully realised. Of course by then it will be too late and would take a similar amount of time to get us back to were we are now. (Which in itself is not good enough)
As a Company Director and a senior shareholder in a £20m company, I am involved, in investment opportunities on a nearly daily basis. We have operations in Northern Ireland, The Irish Republic, Great Britain, Western and Eastern Europe. When a business is considering its options in terms of new investment locations, quite obviously it is looking to see were it can gain most competitive advantage and highest returns within which ever sector it is competing.
Since we have gained our relative peace Northern Ireland Industry has been faced with several new challenges. The ever emerging threat from the Far East has loomed large on the horizon for many years and has undoubtedly created casualties but for the companies that have survived and prospered an even bigger threat has now emerged from much closer to home. Eastern Europe and North Africa have a low cost economy in many ways. As part of the Euro they have significantly lower interest rates than the UK. Their wages are a fraction of ours, as are their energy costs and, unlike the Far East they are only a few days from our markets. To counter that we in Northern Ireland (and the rest of the UK) have much more business friendly employment regulations and our employee related social costs compared to many of our EU competitors are cheaper. In Northern Ireland we have a significant skilled and equally importantly, an increasing supply of unskilled labour, to improve our own competitive edge.
We all agree that Northern Irelands private sector is too small and whilst it is great to see the service sector go from strength to strength I believe that this is only sustainable if we have an innovative, world-class, manufacturing sector, creating wealth and employing the resources that the thriving service sector will supply. It is against this back drop that the plans for Industrial De Rating defy economic rational. We are investing millions trying to attract world class manufacturing here through Invest NI. Why then risk our indigenous manufacturing base for the few millions that this policy, if fully implemented, will bring in?
As I stated at the outset the GB ministers that are responsible for this policy will be long gone, when this policy’s full effects will be felt. Newry or Dundalk, Strabane or Riga, Carrickfergus or Casablanca, these are options facing companies NOW for projects that may take MANY YEARS to realise their full employment opportunities. Existing businesses when faced with expansion opportunities will have to ask them selves the same questions. This policy will only be fully felt in 10 years and I again make a further appeal to the Peter Hain to STOP THE PAIN. Let us nurture and celebrate our manufacturing sector not burden and butcher it. Of course the retort to those of us in local Politics may well be to “get the assembly up and running and sort it out yourselves”. Let’s hope we do, so we can bring some local accountability and passion before it is too late.