"A framework for prosperity": Mr Gordon Brown's apt description of his economic package announced in Belfast yesterday should concentrate minds about the levels of investment required to sustain Northern Ireland's long-term development. The package is carefully targeted towards transport, communications, educational and human resource investment and will be a platform for a strategic campaign to attract international investment, notably from the United States. Although the sums involved represent less than 10 per cent of the annual UK exchequer subvention to Northern Ireland they are a welcome point of departure for its future development plans. And although Mr Brown denied suggestions that it was a bribe ahead of next week's referendum and emphasised the months of discussion and preparation that has gone into preparing the package it is impossible to disregard the political context. His is, after all, the first visit by a Chancellor of the Exchequer for 18 years; over the course of that time the burden of transfers has grown significantly in line with the continuing violence and security provision which greatly expanded the North's public sector.
Against this background Mr Brown's emphasis on youth initiatives, entrepreneurship and innovation contains a clear message for Northern Ireland voters to accept the Belfast Agreement as a framework for peace, in his words, and a platform for a prosperity driven by the energy it can release. There is already talk of another package of aid directed towards retraining and redirecting people made redundant from the security sector if the agreement is accepted.
It would be foolish indeed for those opposed to the agreement to assume that the status quo will simply be preserved if it is rejected. By his presence and announcements yesterday Mr Brown is making it clear that the union contract works both ways. Inevitably a rejection would spark calls at Westminster for the high level of transfers to be re-examined. If it is accepted, the North's economy will still face major readjustment in coming years. But there would be important reservoirs of goodwill from London, from the devolved assemblies and administrations elsewhere in the UK, from the US and the EU, and also, of course, from Dublin.
Despite the stripping down of North-South economic co-operation from the list of cross-border bodies in the agreement in order to secure acceptance from Mr Trimble's party, Northern Ireland's economic future will be of much greater concern in Dublin if it is accepted. Economic reorientation would be much facilitated by an all-Ireland approach which could draw on the comparatively successful experience of the Republic in recent years, not least its access to US and EU-based investors and administrations. From that point of view Mr Brown's announcements are a welcome indication of London's commitment to develop the Northern economy and to create a framework within which that can be done. Financially this package is substantially more than was expected; but it remains a facilitating exercise designed to stimulate private effort, rather than to reinforce the already powerful public sector's dependence on transfers from London.