U.S. Special Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland Declan Kelly encouraged after visit
A stable political environment increases investor confidence to invest in a region, encouraging political and economic progress at the same time.
Larger Text
Print
E-mail
Make a comment
“Each of the business leaders have committed to this going forward, and so now we’re going to run this like a business,” said Kelly. “We’ll have group calls, individual working groups for each of the people involved, we’ll focus on specific areas of opportunity within the four areas I’ve mentioned. It’s off to a great start.”
Kelly admitted that a stable political environment increases investor confidence to invest in a region, encouraging political and economic progress at the same time.
“(Government agency) Invest Northern Ireland’s job and my job is to try and bring whatever additional resources we can in a focused way to create more investment,” said Kelly.
“I spent most of my time so far listening and learning and getting educated. I’ve also spent a good bit of my time trying to come up with initiatives that would quickly draw attention to our goals. I was appointed on September 11 and in a short period of time we’ve managed to get a significant amount of attention.”
Kelly underlined that he was not a politician or a political envoy so he would not get involved in political questions, but he had every confidence that the political leadership in Northern Ireland would work its way through the current set of political issues whilst he focused on the economic ones.
“I’m confident as we go forward that we’ll resolve any issues that are there,” Kelly added.
