Take all the building plans that Ilex and the Ulster Science & Technology Park and Northland Business Park and Braidwater and Garvan O’Doherty Group and Lagan Holdings and Foyle Waterfront and every other commercial development company have - and double and triple them! So this article is not written just from the viewpoint of Foyle Waterfront. It is aiming at full employment in the North West. No lesser aim is acceptable.

I used to think: “Derry has no fairy godmother. It’s up to ourselves”. But I was wrong. After our failed attempts to get tax concessions from The Treasury in London, Derry’s first real tax incentive has come from an unexpected source - Brian Cowen and his Dublin Department of Finance.

But this wasn’t so unexpected to Invest NI, which has been offering N Ireland as a solution to the growing skills shortage and people shortage in Dublin’s hugely successful International Financial Services Centre. Even after IFSC companies de-centralised some work to Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Galway, Naas and Drogheda, it still has thousands of job vacancies it can’t fill.

Brian Cowen is now allowing all of these IFSC companies to extend into Northern Ireland and still maintain their tax rights. Derry should be totally grateful to Brian Cowen for this - any county in the Republic would have stood on its head to access these vacancies accompanied with their tax concessions. Brian Cowen certainly didn’t have to open them to the North. But he did. (note how no southern politician or the IDA has praised the decision).

So what he has done is to open the door to Northern Ireland companies. The ball is now in our court. All praise to local businesses people like Brendan Duddy and Garvan O’Doherty who have already publicly hailed the new entrée Derry has been given to Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre.

Now - how does Derry win the prize of actually securing the financial jobs?

Obviously 1): It is up to Derry businesses to find a solution to the people/skills needs of the IFSC companies. And 2): As Brendan Duddy pointed out in last Tuesday’s “Journal”, local people need to have the skills - or get the skills - that the Dublin companies want. Just talk to the recruitment people - the NW Regional College and UU Magee must be very active in providing education and training in Financial Services. The vacancies are there waiting. Derry office rents are much more competitive than central Dublin.

The City Council and Ilex can help “sell” the city. Just as the NW Economic Partnership has hosted successful events in London and Dublin and Boston, will the City Council host a meeting in Dublin’s IFSC? Compared to Dublin’s city centre, a 10-minute daily commute to work, a great quality of life, great housing and the open Atlantic coast look very appealing.

Belfast just assumes that these jobs will go to Belfast. Newry (with Dundalk) are already looking at how to get the jobs to stop at Newry.