‘Catastophic failure’of One Plan feared

UUP leader Mike Nesbitt has asked if OFMDFM believes there is a risk the One Plan will be a catastrophic failure.

The UUP leader asked Departmental official Tim Losty about the potential for disaster in his capacity as Chairman of the OFMDFM Committee at Stormont.

Mr Nesbitt said he had never seen a risk matrix as drastic as that composed for the One Plan, which originally hoped for 1,500 digital jobs, 1,000 creative and cultural jobs, 1,500 knowledge services jobs and 1,000 new green jobs, as well as new jobs in tourism, public administration, health, retail, infrastructure and education, to make up a 12,500 target by 2020.

The UUP chief pointed that OFMDFM had defined four risks and that both the “probability of risk occurring” and the “impact of risk” scored five - the highest score possible on a scale of one to five.

Mr Nesbitt stated: “The impact of risk also scores five, so you are saying that it is almost certain to happen, and, when it does, it will almost certainly be catastrophic. I have never seen two scores of five on a risk matrix.”

Mr Losty replied that the high risk rating for a plan that shortlisted the removal of traffic from the Walled City, the creation of a third road bridge and a new footbridge between Prehen and the Brandywell as achievable actions for the city, was due to the dire economic situation globally.

He said: “It reflects the very serious economic situation. Although the One Plan was put together in the midst of recession, the hope was that the recession would have bottomed out and we would be coming out of it now.

“Unfortunately, the economic climate is still fairly serious, so we have afforded it high risk and high impact, because it is something that all of us on the interdepartmental group and the strategy group need to give a lot of attention to.

“We are very aware of the impact of global issues on some of the organisations and businesses here. If something happens overseas, the parent company can pull out and take away 300 to 400 jobs in one go. So, we are very sensitive to those issues.”

Mr Nesbitt asked if the two scores of five indicated public investment was at risk, given the One Plan has been included in the Programme for Government.

He said public investment was not at risk “but that achieving our targets for public investment here is at risk.”