SIB/Invest NI: Staff Expertise

Office Of The First Minister And Deputy First Minister – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:45 pm on 29 June 2009.

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Photo of George Savage George Savage UUP 2:45, 29 June 2009

4. asked the First Minister and deputy First Minister the number and percentage of senior operational staff in the Strategic Investment Board and Invest NI who have a business background, as opposed to a public-sector background.    (AQO 3056/09)

Photo of Martin McGuinness Martin McGuinness Sinn Féin

Information relating to Invest NI is a matter for the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, so I will answer the question as it relates to the Strategic Investment Board (SIB).

Nineteen of SIB’s 24 senior operational staff, which is 79% of the total, have a private-sector background. The remaining five have a public-sector background. The Strategic Investment Board plays an important strategic role in supporting Departments with the progression of the Executive’s objectives for infrastructure investment. It employs staff with the wide range of skills and experience that are required to do that.

All positions are filled after rigorous open competitions, which ensure that appointments are made solely on merit. The Strategic Investment Board encourages applications from all qualified individuals, regardless of the sectors in which they have previously worked. Over the past year, the board has played a very important role in helping Departments to achieve a record level of capital investment, the results of which are becoming increasingly visible to the public. For example, the construction of the new further education campus for Belfast Metropolitan College in the Titanic Quarter is under way, and the construction of the new £270 million acute hospital outside Enniskillen has commenced.

In the past year, more than 40% of construction work here has been public-sector related, and more than 90% of Government procurement contracts have been secured locally, mainly by small and medium-sized enterprises. The Strategic Investment Board has played an important part in securing that outcome.

Photo of George Savage George Savage UUP

Will the Minister explain why so many people with accountancy, quango and finance back­grounds are members of Invest NI and the SIB? Does he agree that we must have a culture change in, and a rationalisation of, those bodies, with a view to enlisting members who have a vision for the twenty-first century?

Photo of Martin McGuinness Martin McGuinness Sinn Féin

The SIB provides support to Departments on projects across a wide range of sectors, including health education, roads, schools, further education colleges, regeneration and other major schemes.

In order to provide such support effectively, the SIB’s staff must have the relevant skills. The SIB’s policy is to recruit the skills that it needs on the basis of merit and, of course, fairness and openness. Many, but by no means all, of its members come from a private-sector background. The starting salaries of new recruits to the SIB are decided individually and take account of earnings in the person’s previous job.

Photo of Jennifer McCann Jennifer McCann Sinn Féin

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. Does the Minister know whether it is intended to include the salaries of SIB personnel in the proposed review of senior civil servants’ pay?

Photo of Martin McGuinness Martin McGuinness Sinn Féin

The review of the current pay and reward arrangements for senior civil servants that was recently announced by the Minister of Finance and Personnel will focus only on the pay and bonuses of senior civil servants in the Civil Service, for which the Department of Finance and Personnel has management responsibility. It is not a review of wider public-sector pay, which would be a much more extensive and complex exercise that would have to be agreed and taken forward by the relevant Ministers and sponsoring Departments. Therefore, that review cannot be read across directly to the SIB.

Under previously agreed arrangements, the SIB receives the same annual cost-of-living increase that underlies the settlement for the Senior Civil Service. Therefore, the SIB’s pay for 2009-2010 cannot be finalised until that cost-of-living increase is determined.