Brian Feeney has some interesting thoughts today on the paralysis of the Stormont Assembly, and particularly on Nigel Dodds’ rejection of an all-island investment body:
Faced with a range of experienced financiers and economists the said
Mr Dodds drew on his own vast expertise as a unionist nay-sayer and
said, you’ve guessed it, "No". Northern Ireland’s "interests would not
be best served by a merger of INI and IDA. The reality is that we are
competitors. The priority is to make the most of our assets and
advantages".Could he make a list of them? Is this the same Nigel Dodds who
was up in the north-west last month with Micheal Martin agreeing a
joint INI-IDA cross-border project for technology in Derry and
Letterkenny funded by the EU Interreg programme?One of the many sad aspects of Mr Dodds’s predictably
narrow-minded summary dismissal of Dr Gillespie’s suggestions is that
no-one else on the executive got a chance to say a word. It’s too much
to expect the executive to discuss the issue. (Irish News, via Nuzhound)
It’s worth recalling that Sinn Fein had the opportunity to take Dodds’ Enterprise brief but passed it up in favour of the joys of education, precisely the kind of decision that may yet create a political space for Fianna Fail in the north.
As things stand it’s heartening that the momentum for an all-island economy is as strong as it is.
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