Following Sir Reg Empey's appearance before the Committee on 14 June 2000, I attach additional written evidence sought by the Committee as follows:

ANNEX A  IDB Inward Investment targets for 2000-01 (requested by the Chairman)—see page 155, Q409.

ANNEX B  An indication of the regional "multiplier effect" within Northern Ireland (requested by Mr Pound)—see page 164, Q441.

ANNEX C  A table setting out by District Council area, the number of visits by potential inward investors arranged by IDB in 1999-2000, broken down into visits by overseas companies and UK companies respectively (requested by Mr Beggs)—see page 157, Q414.

  The Minister undertook to provide additional information as follows:

ANNEX D  Visits to District Council areas by potential investors over the last 5 years—see page 157, Q416.

ANNEX E  Number of projects offered support by IDB and LEDU by Parliamentary Constituency over the last three years (using the formats of Sir Reg Empey's response to the Northern Ireland Assembly and to which he alluded at the hearing)—see page 157, Q415.

ANNEX F  Response to comments in the PAC Report that areas which had very high levels of unemployment in Northern Ireland were receiving disproportionately very much less in inward investment (requested by the Chairman)—see page 158, Q420.

  During Mr Ingram's appearance in front of the Committee on 7 June, Mr McCabe made the statement that IDB's forecast for job promotions "regularly and quite significantly exceeds the actual number of jobs created". This was an area examined by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) during its inquiry into inward investment. Evidence submitted to PAC showed that, on average, some 76 per cent of inward investment jobs promoted were actually created and that the average duration of jobs is estimated to be 10 years.

  *  2,800 if the market does not continue to offer some unusually large job related call centre projects.

  Several estimates have been made of the size of the regional multiplier for the Northern Ireland economy. These estimates have commonly fallen into the range of 1.1 to 1.5 depending on sector, ie for an assisted enterprise additional jobs will be generated in the local economy through the spending of the wages of workers and the purchases the enterprise makes from suppliers. However, commonly, a multiplier estimate of 1.3 has been used as an average for these calculations in the Northern Ireland context.

  Notes:

  1.  General visits to Northern Ireland (ie those not including specific council areas) and visit elements for other than inward investment purposes (eg visits to tourist attractions) are excluded.

  2.  The total for Council area visits may exceed the total number of visits to Northern Ireland as a company visit can include more than one Council area.

  Notes:

  1.  General visits not involving interest in a specifc area are excluded from table above.

  2.  Total District Council vists may exceed total Northern Ireland visits as many companies may visits more than one District Council area.

  Note:

  1.  Total project locations exceed total projects as some projects are located in more than one constituency.

  2.  Companies have still to determine the precise location of one project secured during 1998-99 and two projects secured during 1999-2000. Consequently these three projects are omitted from the above table.

  Editorial note: This table refers to all IDB projects, not just inward investment projects.

  Every effort is made to encourage new inward projects to locate in TSN areas ie targets of 75 per cent of first time visits and new investments to be in/or adjacent to TSN areas.

  Over past four years the number of jobs promoted in TSN areas from inward investment has exceeded75 per cent of the total.

  IDB are now reporting on the numbers of jobs created versus promotion in TSN areas i.e. since the 1998/99 Annual Report, and for the three year period to March 1997, 71 per cent (2,218) of jobs promoted had been created by March 1999 in these TSN areas.

  Further extension to that is IDB's planned monitoring of new inward projects in TSN areas to ascertain how many of the jobs created are going to people from those areas.

  Taking any one year in isolation is not very representative for a particular TSN area—a three or five year comparison is necessary. For example, PAC made reference to Belfast District Council area having 23.4 per cent of Northern Ireland's unemployment but falling well short in the percentage of jobs promoted by IDB. However, over the five year period 1994-95 to 1998-99, Belfast DC secured 23 per cent of the total jobs and 21 per cent of IDB assistance.

11 July 2000