Fermanagh and Omagh District Council Business Conference – The Future of our Local Economy

Fermanagh and Omagh District Council’s Chair, Councillor Thomas O’Reilly, has hosted a Business Conference today.

Councillor O’Reilly said that achieving regional balance requires investment in infrastructure, skills, innovation and enterprise. The Conference was supported by the Federation of Small Businesses.

Niall O’Donnellan, a Senior Research Associate with the Centre for Cross Border Studies, discussed the ‘Prospect of Economic and Social Growth in the Southern North West with Fermanagh and Omagh as the key regional driver and catalyst’. He spoke on his recent report, Accelerating Growth: Progressing Globally Ambitious Sectoral Clusters on the island of Ireland.

Keynote speaker was Ian Snowden, Interim Permanent Secretary at the Department for the Economy. Mr Snowden outlined the Department’s Economic Vision which has four inter-related objectives: increasing the number of good jobs, raising productivity, promoting regional balance and reducing carbon emissions.

Martin McKendry, Director of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), also addressed the delegates. CAFRE is Northern Ireland’s only agri-food college and has campuses in Enniskillen, Greenmount (Antrim) and Loughry (Cookstown). It delivers programmes to 10,000 people working in the agri-food sector.

Also on the programme were Emma Weaver, founder of Mental Wealth International and who has has dedicated two decades to empowering individuals and organisations to prioritise wellbeing, and Dr Lisa Wilson, Senior Economist at the Nevin Economic Research Institute, who has carried out work in areas related to the labour market. Professor David Rooney, from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, shared his knowledge and experience of the green economy. The conference MC was Louise Cullen, the BBC NI Agriculture and Environment Correspondent.

View Niall’s presentation here.