Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what steps his Department has taken to encourage international companies to (a) invest and (b) base themselves in Northern Ireland in the last six months.

International investment makes an important contribution towards Northern Ireland's prosperity.

The Northern Ireland Investment Summit, led by the Department for Business and Trade in partnership with the Northern Ireland Office and Invest NI, welcomed over 180 global investors to the region in September. The Summit showcased Northern Ireland’s innovation, sector strengths and opportunities for inward investment to a truly global audience.

We are already seeing new international investment in Northern Ireland’s key growth sectors as a result, along with established companies already based in Northern Ireland announcing that they will be expanding their operations in the region.

My Department continues to work closely with the Department for Business and Trade to maximise opportunities to encourage investment. I attended the Global Investment Summit that the UK hosted in November and met with many businesses interested in setting and scaling up in the UK. My clear message to them was that Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom has all of the right ingredients for economic success: exceptional talent, unique opportunities, a tradition of creativity and a healthy spirit of private sector entrepreneurship.

A key factor for international investment is of course business certainty. We thus welcome the restoration of devolved governance in Northern Ireland.