Editorial: The rescue for Harland and Wolff helps to save one of Northern Ireland's most important companies

​Harland and Wolff shipyard, perhaps Northern Ireland’s most famous company, has again been rescued.

​This time it is going into the hands of a ship builder owned by the Spanish state.

The news of the rescue is thus welcome, but tinged with sadness, as yet another British asset stays in foreign ownership. The intervention of Navantia, on the basis of support from the UK government, will save around 1,000 jobs.

It is very good to know that defence contracts will be so central to the future of Harland and Wolff.

Earlier this year, the Westminster-based think tank Policy Exchange called for Northern Ireland to play an even greater role in UK defence, particularly when the Republic of Ireland was neither a member of Nato, nor contributing to its own security, but was benefitting from the umbrella of British defence. The then prime minister Rishi Sunak said that he would be “delighted” to examine the report: “I have seen, with my own visits, the vital role that Northern Ireland is playing through the location of firms like Thales and Harland and Wolff."

He said that the deal to restore Stormont included a specific commitment to examine “how we can further bolster Northern Ireland’s share of the UK defence sector because it’s another essential pillar of our precious economic union”.

The DUP leader and MP for East Belfast Gavin Robinson said yesterday that Harland & Wolff is part of a defence sector “that has huge potential for further growth in Northern Ireland”.

Defence is key a contribution to the UK from a province that sometimes seems to ask what the UK can do for it, rather than vice versa. It is also a major potential source of employment in NI.

Meanwhile, the survival of Harland and Wolff helps to keep alive a long, successful Ulster tradition of heavy industry.