Belfast News: The Great Invest NI Giveaway?

Invest Northern Ireland the organisation charged with matters vital to the economic success and growth of the Northern Ireland economy, have again backed a company seeking to invest in its operation based here. CyberSource, a US company  is to invest almost £3m  into its Belfast based research and development centre, with financial backing from Invest NI totaling more than £625,000 (source BBC).

In return Cybersource, who currently employ 31 people in Northern Ireland are reported to be taking on 'ZERO' new staff. We ask: Is it open season at Invest NI or are Northern Ireland firms excluded from the great giveaway?

Editorial

During such tough economic times there are many people who would love such investment. The unemployed who seek just a little funding to get their ideas started, get nothing from InvestNI, small businesses struggling for assistance, get little, local talent seems virtually sidelined to benefit multi-national, multi-million pounds companies.

Whilst the CyberSource investment is welcomed, their financial investment, is in essence an investment in CyberSource alone and InvestNI need to be challenged on the huge amounts of money splashed out on foreign companies, when compared with local talent.

This site thought that it had seen it all, with InvestNI's assistance to Seagate, which amounted to £133,684 pounds per head, but little could we have known that they would have 'A Give Away' giving £625,000 without securing a single job.

Our View: InvestNI stands criticised in the past for a poor return on their invested money and now is the time to invest time, investigating fully InvestNI, their strategy, their successes, their failures and determine why their policy leaves the perception that only rich foreign companies are able to secure money, whilst local entrepreneurs, new starts and existing local business can only gain the benefit of their 'inherent talkers'