'Despite political instability and numerous talks processes, the Northern Ireland business community has remained resilient'

The 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is now upon us; an agreement that brought hope and optimism.

A quarter of a century ago, we dared to imagine a future built on a ‘peace dividend’ that could create prosperity for all. We imagined a future where NI left its nightmares behind and we gave our children a glimpse of a country where they could live, work and raise families in peace, as far too many of our best and brightest had left these shores to pursue their dreams elsewhere. The global goodwill that the Agreement generated for NI was enormous. Now, as we approach its 25th anniversary that goodwill not only remains, but is being renewed.

FSB sent a delegation to Washington DC last month and experienced this renewed goodwill first hand when we hosted the ‘Power of Small Business’ roundtable, where some of the most influential people in the US shared their commitment to help maximise NI’s immense potential. This month, the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, will visit Belfast to mark the Agreement’s anniversary, as will Bill and Hilary Clinton, former and current Prime Ministers, alongside many other major political figures from these islands and beyond. For such a small place, NI certainly has an extraordinary number of people batting for it; so it would be an utter dereliction of duty if we were to fail to harness that political capital and international goodwill to forge a new prosperity process.

However, doing so will take more than warm words; it will require a laser-like focus on the future, whilst being mindful of the past. The signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement provided great optimism and a genuine move away from our troubled past, but what followed were waves of political drama and stop-start government.

In just 25 years, the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (1998) was followed by the creation of the NI Executive in 1999; the collapse of the NI Executive in 2002; the St Andrews Agreement (2006); the restoration of the NI Executive in 2007; the Haass-O`Sullivan Talks (2013); the Stormont House Agreement (2014); A Fresh Start (2015); the collapse of the NI Executive in January 2017; the restoration of the NI Executive in January 2020 under New Decade, New Approach and, latterly, the collapse of the NI Executive again in February 2022.

And those 25 years were also punctuated by the global financial crash; Brexit and the associated NI Protocol; and the global Covid pandemic.

Tides of optimism gave way to waves of pessimism, however, experience leads to knowledge and I believe that we can and will do better. The Windsor Framework marks a new era in UK-EU relations and provides a chance to move forward - if we get it right.

Despite political instability and numerous talks processes, the NI business community has remained resilient. With a combination of vision, ambition and absolute determination to succeed, they have provided a pathway of opportunity for people to prosper, becoming world leaders in cybercrime expertise, fintech and cultural industries, exporting to every corner of the globe.

Business will play its part, but we need to create the conditions for wealth generators - entrepreneurs and businesses – to flourish. FSB led the call for ‘Making Northern Ireland an Enhanced Economic Zone’, initially through paper published in 2018 that set out a vision to capitalise on the new post-Brexit situation. Many of the ideas that paper proposed are now key elements of the Windsor Framework, based on a bold ambition to use our unique geographical position as the gateway to two of the world’s largest markets, whilst simultaneously capitalising on our unique relationship with the US. Through our discussions with Joe Kennedy, the US Special Economic Envoy, I believe we now have a real champion in our corner who is determined to do whatever he can to help NI seize these opportunities. We need to assist him, and create the conditions to let him succeed on our behalf.

As the world marks the 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement let’s lift our eyes to the horizon, not just in hope, but in the certainty that there are better days ahead. If our political parties can resolve their differences and deliver long-term stable government, there is a genuine opportunity to create a new ‘Economic Good Friday Agreement’ so that those waves of pessimism are washed aside by a relentless tide of optimism for the future.