ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FORUM

 

Meeting of the Infrastructure Sub-Group

held at 10.00am on Monday 25th February 2008

in Clarence Court

 

 

Present:            Jim McCusker (Chairman)

                        Janice Treacy

                        Doreen Brown

 

 

1.0              Apologies

 

1.1       Apologies were received from Mike Brennan, John Gilliland, Peter McNaney and Bryan Gregory.

 

2.0              Note of previous meeting

 

2.1       The note of the sub-group meeting held on 10th December was agreed.

 

3.0       Matters Arising

 

3.1       The report of the Capital Realisation Taskforce was not yet available.

 

3.2               Departments had been commissioned to produce Delivery Plans to set out their approach to delivering capital schemes funded in the Budget and shown in ISNI.

 

3.3       The timescale for the review of the Planning system was not yet known.

 

4.0       Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland

 

4.1       The London Economics Report, which had been commissioned to help SIB to draw up ISNI2, had only recently been received from SIB and had been circulated to Sub-Group members.

 

4.2               The Sub-Group made a number of points about the Report and its use:

 

·         it appeared to be a summary, without the detail of the work underpinning it;

·         the methodology used was unclear; it would have been of interest to understand the criteria and scoring system used to make a systematic assessment of the capital schemes involved;

·         there was no indication of how it judged “public good” and “robustness” in relation to the schemes;

·         it was unclear if/how the Report could be used to rebalance ISNI when slippage inevitable occurred in some schemes;

·         in some instances, the line taken in the Report was not in accordance with current policy, eg, in relation to Energy, affordable housing.

 

4.3               The Sub-Group agreed to seek a meeting with SIB to cover a number of issues:

 

·         the way in which any reprofiling within ISNI would be undertaken, given the absence of criteria for such rebalancing in the London Economics Report;

·         the latest position in relation to the assessed capacity of the private and public sectors to deliver ISNI;

·         the use to be made of the London Economics Report.

 

5.0       Report to EDF

 

5.1       A report would be drafted to EDF on the following lines

 

·         the London Economics Report had only been available for a matter of days, and would require further consideration;

·         it did not appear to provide adequate means for making an assessment of the elements within ISNI2;

·         there were continuing concerns about the capacity of both the public and private sectors to deliver ISNI;

·         there was a continuing need to have agreed criteria for rebalancing ISNI as inevitable slippage occurs.

 

6.0              Next Meeting

 

6.1       A meeting would be arranged between the Sub-Group and SIB in April.