DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: ​Time to deliver on Derry jobs

​Her new regional jobs and investment bill will, we are told, create binding targets for departments to ensure that Derry gets its fair share. These are welcome proposals.

As noted in these pages many times government ministers have often claimed it is not the role of Invest NI to tell companies where to invest.

Yet the Industrial Development Act 2002 stipulates that Invest NI’s functions can be ‘exercised in accordance with such directions of a general or specific nature as the Department of the Economy may give to’ it.

Thus there is nothing stopping Economy Minister Conor Murphy from keeping his focus firmly on the east-west divide.

Mr. Murphy has been explicit in stating that this will be a priority, last summer telling the ‘Journal’ Sinn Féin would take the economy ministry to drive Magee’s expansion and rebalance the economy.

To be clear it is in the interests of central governments in Belfast and Dublin to ensure balanced regional development.

Ms McLaughlin says investment here will be a boon to the whole economy as it is here ‘special intervention will have the most transformative impact’.

Before Christmas Mr. Paul Mac Flynn, a co-director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute, made a similar point in the Oireachtas, arguing that investing in Derry-Donegal could bring a real ‘productivity leap’ given how badly the region lagged.

The illness has been well-diagnosed. Time to cure it.

Boosting Derry/Donegal region would be ‘real prize’ of all-island economy and deliver ‘actual productivity leap’