The debate was chaired by Jim Fitzpatrick (pictured) who was recently appointed the Ireland Economics Editor at the BBC.  It was sponsored by local recruitment firm Clarendon Executive.  Clarendon had prepared a series of video sequences that featured various local business people and NGO representatives. The videos acted as a kind of visual separator for the various segments of the debate. The opening section focused, largely, on the role of government in doing something radical to stimulate the economy. The middle section tended more towards educational needs and skills. The final section was a bit of a wrap-up. And Fitzpatrick did a good job getting feedback from the floor. Thankfully, little of the feedback was sycophantic – and most was genuinely interesting. Thankfully, also, if any politicians were in the audience, they were struck dumb.

As it turned out, the event wasn’t really a debate – more a discussion. The panel included pretty obvious bets including the inevitable representative from Invest NI (Tracy Meharg), a couple of Economists (Graham Brownlow from Queens and Angela McGowan from the Northern Bank), a CBI representative (Ian Coulter, the incoming regional Chairman) and Steve Orr from the Northern Ireland Science Park.  Seamus McAleavey from NICVA represented the ‘third sector’.

The contributions from the panel were pretty safe. Criticism of the local Executive was minimal. Angela McGowan cautioned against being too hard on the public sector – and resorting to a ‘them and us’ debate. However, thankfully, a degree of dissent came from Graham Brownlow who noted the amount of time and resources dedicated to “appraisals” by the NI Civil Service compared to Whitehall. He indicated that it was not unknown for appraisals of appraisals to happen at Departmental level. But that was as contentious as it got. When the floor contributions came things started to get more animated and interesting.

Mark Ennis, the incoming Chair of InvestNI, contributed from the floor and pointed out the difficulty faced by local businesses in securing capital. He hinted at a dearth of funding – especially mid-sized firms, and possibly for firms wanting to grow through M&A. I chipped in a few comments about the public sector squeezing out an entrepreneurial culture – and also crowding-out commercially driven private equity and venture capital funds. I also had a poke at an Executive almost completely populated by people with little or no business experience, never mind international business experience.

However, the reference to education resulted in a more robust debate and near consensus that something radical did, indeed, need to be done. Culturally, this is a society (and I’m referring to the UK, not just Northern Ireland) where a career in the law, or medicine, is seen to be a good thing. But a career in business – according to the received wisdom – is something for slightly dodgy people who weren’t that great at school.

The need for a 20-year vision and strategy – for a society built from Primary School up, focused on business and wealth creation – was one that was articulated by several speakers from the floor. Educationalists, bankers, economists and business people were united on the issue that if the Assembly did nothing else it needed to do something radical in education to make changes. And with that I’d wholeheartedly agree.  Although it also needs to do something radical – and soon – with an economy that is absurdly dependent on the public purse and public sector employment.

Overall, an excellent and thought provoking debate, well chaired by Jim Fitzpatrick – and a great turnout from the business community. Congratulations should go to Queen’s University and Clarendon Executive for organising it and allowing us all to see a wonderful new centre of management learning. Hopefully some of its alumni will build great new businesses.