Declan Kelly U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland has stated  the economic conference held at the U.S State Department and attended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Northern Irish First Minister and Deputy First Minister was an outstanding success.

“In total, we had over a trillion dollars worth of commercial value in the room.  And in terms of the companies that had already invested in Northern Ireland, several of them are multi-billion dollar corporations like Allstate and the New York Stock Exchange, Liberty Mutual, Caterpillar, and so forth – Terex.  And two companies made an investment announcement this morning at the beginning of the conference:  One was Terex, which added a further 35 jobs in Northern Ireland, and a new investment was announced by Dow Chemical for 25 high-quality jobs in Northern Ireland as part of the conference.” Kelly said
 
“We had two moderated sessions in the morning after the opening remarks.  They were moderated by Maria Bartiromo of CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”  And the conference itself was dedicated to promoting investment in Northern Ireland, but also more as important, trade between that region and the United States further underlining Secretary Clinton’s belief that economic investment is indeed the best means to build on the political progress that’s been made in the north of Ireland in recent weeks and months.
 
During the course of the day we, of course, talked about the challenges that corporations are facing during these difficult times – economically – and the need to find innovative solutions to expand their businesses.  And we also talked about the benefits that Northern Ireland offers U.S. companies if they are in the market for export and related activity or if they are looking for a diversified local strategy whereby they have some employment in America and they also want to diversify outside of the United States.” Kelly stated.

Kelly stated that the breakout sessions were extremely successful “They were far more intensive as you might imagine, because there were smaller groups broken out into separate subcategories.  And we had chairs in those meetings made up of members of the U.S. and Northern Ireland working groups that I established after my appointment.  And literally, they came up with – in some cases more than a dozen recommendations as to how to improve the competitive edge of Northern Ireland and things that were emerging in the world from a macroeconomic and microeconomic standpoint that might be lead indicators that Northern Ireland should be thinking about in the context of building its business case moving forward.