Biden dangles $6bn investment boost if Northern Ireland power sharing agreed
Joe Biden has dangled a $6bn (£5bn) carrot in front of Northern Ireland’s leaders with a promise to boost the country’s economy with US investment if power sharing is restored.
In a thinly veiled message to the Democratic Unionist party, which has been boycotting the devolved government for more than a year, the US president told an audience in Belfast that American investors were ready to “triple” the $2bn already invested.
“The simple truth is that peace and economic opportunity go together,” Biden said.
He reminded representatives of the region’s five biggest parties, who sat at the front of the auditorium, of how transformative the Good Friday agreement had been 25 years ago and urged them to put the past behind them and look at the prosperity that could flow in the next quarter-century.
In the past 25 years the gross domestic product of Northern Ireland has doubled, while in “just the past decade” almost $2bn in US investment has gone into the economy, he said.
“I predict to you if things continue to move in the right direction, [it] will more than triple,” he said. “There are scores of major American corporations wanting to come here, wanting to invest.
“It is up to us to keep this going, keep going in the work that has been done every day for the last 25 years.”
Citing cyber and tech industries, green energy and young entrepreneurs, he said the opportunities for Northern Ireland to lift itself into becoming a major economic part of the UK economy were “incredible”.
He urged political leaders to “sustain the peace”, promising it would “unleash this incredible economic opportunity”.
Biden’s special economic envoy for Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy III, will be heading a trade delegation to the region “maybe later this year”
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