Review 2019

Mark Drakeford

Working hard in the headwinds of Brexit

The First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford AM took the opportunity at the Belfast International Homecoming to appeal for bridge-building across the Irish Sea despite the headwinds of Brexit.
The Welsh premier made the appeal at the Homecoming’s gala banquet in Belfast City Hall.
He also said he was envious of the strong global Irish American networks – which were represented at the three day Homecoming event which showcased the best of Belfast to the Irish diaspora.

Mr Drakeford praised the “well organised diaspora” of Ireland and Scotland for promoting their country’s “practical interests around the globe”, but called for better self-organisation to protect Welsh interests in the context of Brexit.

“There are Welsh people, too, around the world,” he said.

“They are just as passionate about their identity and the home from which they have sprung – but they don’t yet operate in that organised way we see in this room.

“For us, that means we have to work harder – and harder still in the headwinds of Brexit – to sustain our profile and our unique identity on the international stage. Since I became First Minister, in December last year, we have an International Relations Minister in our Cabinet – an idea completely unthinkable at the start of devolution. We have a highly regarded International Strategy, which is being discussed and debated across Wales.”

Mr Drakeford stressed the importance of forging links between people on “different sides of the Irish Sea”, particularly those from “Celtic nations”.

“Amongst us all are links of language, of history, of culture, of economic identity and, in many instances of progressive political outlook,” he said.

“We all share the presence of a powerful neighbour, with a global and dominant language and a well-developed sense of its own significance. In the Brexit context – and beyond it too – we have had the best results, I believe, when we have been able to work together, in an informal Celtic alliance, to provide a more powerful counterweight to hard line leave propositions than we could have mobilised working on our own.

“And in the difficult days ahead, I think the effort to identify common interests, to act with a sense of solidarity in their pursuit, and to create outcomes which work for us all – that effort will be needed as never before.”

The keynote speaker at the Belfast Ambassador Awards at City Hall was First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford AM who spoke of the significance of Celtic alliances in the times in which we live. The following is an edited version of his address.

“To be here from Wales, with our nearest European neighbours is a sign of the importance we attached to all we have achieved together in the past, and want to go on achieving in the future.

There is no point in pretending that Brexit doesn’t cast its long shadow and I am not going to start in the belief that everyone will share what I have to say. In fact it would not be true, in Wales, that everyone would agree. Brexit has created divisions in communities and in families wherever we live. But I do want to set out the Welsh Government’s position, on Brexit generally, and on the deal struck by the Johnson government with the EU.

We have had a long period of trying to persuade the UK Government of a deal which would leave the EU without doing economic damage, There has been a recognition that this was not going to be possible post-Mrs May.

Today, I believe that the decision should go back to the people and that we would campaign to remain.

So where does it all leave us? I want to say something on two fronts: The future of the UK and the future of Wales in the world.

Brexit does not leave the UK untouched. Of course there are parties in different parts of the UK, including Wales, who want to see an end to the UK as currently constituted. Even those parties, in my experience, want the system to work as well as it can in the meantime, because the wellbeing of our different peoples is affected.

The notion of the UK as a voluntary association of four nations, in which continued membership rests on consent, and which exercises only those functions which the component parts have agreed to locate at that level, is important.

As a Labour Government in Wales we believe that pooling our dispersed sovereignty in that way has provided real advantages in the past. It gave us the NHS. It made full employment a collective responsibility. It saw legislation passed to combat discrimination against black people and people with disabilities. It created the minimum wage.

And for us, at least, it still has the potential to pool our risks and redistribute the rewards in ways which works for the many and not just the few.

But for those who take a different long-term view, we believe proposals that we have put forward which entrench devolution, still have merit, in making what we have now work much better for us all.

And we have published our proposals in the hope that they will create a debate.

Part of the reason I am here this evening is in an effort to make that happen.

We have missed, so much, the participation of the Executive here in the many different forums, which bring the governments of the UK together. We look forward hugely to the time when that participation can be resumed.

In the meantime, we hope that progressive political parties here will be willing to consider our document, to develop the proposals it contains and to work with us in bringing about the improvement which is so urgently needed.

Let me turn now to my second theme: that of Wales in the world.

I am very envious of the audience here this evening. Both Scotland and Ireland have a well organised diaspora, well versed in promoting your reputation and your practical interests around the globe. There are Welsh people, too, around the world. They are just as passionate about their identity and the home from which they have sprung – but they don’t yet operate in that organised way we see in this room.

For us, that means we have to work harder – and harder still in the headwinds of Brexit – to sustain our profile and our unique identity on the international stage. Since I became First Minister, in December last year, we have an International Relations Minister in our Cabinet – an idea completely unthinkable at the start of devolution. We have a highly regarded International Strategy, which is being discussed and debated across Wales. We have a sense of our strengths and ambitions and as such, it is even more necessary to go on cementing links between those of us who live on different sides of the Irish Sea.

The British Irish Council spreads it net further than Ireland, Scotland and Wales and amongst us all are links of language, of history, of culture, of economic identity and, in many instances of progressive political outlook.

We all share the presence of a powerful neighbour, with a global and dominant language and a well-developed sense of its own significance. In the Brexit context – and beyond it too – we have had the best results, I believe, when we have been able to work together, in an informal Celtic alliance, to provide a more powerful counterweight to hard-line Brexit leave propositions than we could have mobilised working on our own.

And in the difficult days ahead, I think the effort to identify common interests, to act with a sense of solidarity in their pursuit, and to create outcomes which work for us all – that effort will be needed as never before.

So thank you for the chance to set up my soap box here this evening, to draw some comfort from the spirit of cooperation and celebration which this evening embodies and to bring you the warmest greetings from Wales, not simply because of what we share today, and have shared over so many years, but because of the future that, in our different ways, I believe we can still share together.

Howard Hastings

At this year’s Belfast International Homecoming I was asked to speak on the subject, ‘Hotel Investments Reflect Our Belief in Belfast’.

Before addressing that I shared a little history with the wide range of delegates at the Tourism Breakfast at the Titanic Hotel,.

I returned home to Northern Ireland 30 years ago in time to see two of our hotels blown up on consecutive nights. I was a guest at a black tie dinner the night of the last Europa bomb in 1992 – structural engineers, ironically – before we owned it.

There was no real tourism in Northern Ireland. July and August were our quietest months. When pressed, our then Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board said ‘at least we were better than Beirut’.

But since the ceasefires in 1994 we have been on an upward trajectory. Some say peace brings tourism. The World Tourism Organisation argue that tourism brings peace.
It took a while to get going. We had to work out what we wanted to sell. We settled on four rosy apples initially to put in the front of our marketing basket.

There was the Giant’s Causeway, and moreover, the Causeway Coastal Route. An East Coast version of The Wild Atlantic Way, if you like. There was the Walled City of Derry/Londonderry, our second city, and host to the UK Capital of Culture in 2013.
There was St Patrick, the patron saint all others wish they could acquire in the next transfer window. Yes, the saint who speaks to our Christian heritage, across all traditions, but moreover the saint for whom the world stops and goes green one day every year.

And then there was Titanic. It spoke to ‘boomtown Belfast’, the city that was in 1912 the third greatest in the British Empire. The tragic story that took 100 years before it could be told.

We put these products into our strategy. And we declared, without really believing it, that we would double the value of tourism in 10 years. We had to animate our products and shine a spotlight on our ambition. We celebrated 2012 as a year of tourism awakening. “Our Time, Our Place” was the cry.

MTV hosted their awards here, highlighting our musical diversity. The Irish Open came here for the first time in 50 years. We hosted the Giro D’Italia, and the World Police & Fire Games.
Our brand proposition was of a storytelling people with authentic stories to tell. Our new visitors loved it, and they wanted more.
Cynics and sceptics said the Titanic Belfast wouldn’t make its break-even target of 400,000 visitors a year. Well, it has doubled that number…..year after year.
The Irish Open came back, and then this year THE OPEN came too. And the Royal and Ancient were rewarded for extending the host club rota to Royal Portrush by one of the most well organised and commercially successful tournaments in their history.

To our authentic stories we added one more. A fictional one which has taken our tourism economy by storm. Who knew ? Who knew that the Dark Hedges and all the settings used to film HBO’s Game of Thrones would prove such an almighty draw?
It is 70 years since John Wayne starred with Maureen O’Hara in the Quiet Man. It is still a key story in drawing visitors to Co. Mayo today. On that basis I believe the Game of Thrones has some way to go yet.

So you ask, What about those targets? Well we have smashed them With two years to spare – and Northern Ireland tourism is now a £1 billion per annum industry.

And its new ambition? To go again. To redouble in another ten years. This confidence is shared by the private sector. In the last two years not only did the fabulous Titanic Hotel open, but so too did properties of scale by AC Marriott, by Dalata plc, by Hampton by Hilton, and at our own Grand Central Hotel, amongst others.

In the old days, 30 years ago, there were capital grants from government to develop and extend hotels, in order to prevent market failure. “To keep the lights on” so to speak.
By contrast, these new hotels, representing as they do an investment of in excess of £250 million, were made entirely from private funds – not a penny from the public purse.

What few people understand is that Belfast has a special position within the Irish tourism landscape. Whilst in UK terms it is the same size as Bristol or Newcastle, Liverpool or Leeds, in tourism terms, it is to the island of Ireland what Edinburgh is to Great Britain.
If you are on a short stay and are only visiting a few places, after London you will go to Edinburgh. Here in Ireland after Dublin, you will come to Belfast. That is why we are seeing more Chinese visitors for example, than any of the Great British cities I mentioned, almost 200,000 this year from a standing start, more visitors than from Australia, or Canada, or France or Germany.

Whilst tourism has doubled, our wider economic metrics have also been positive. We now have more people in employment in Northern Ireland than ever before, and are one of the better performing regions within the UK.

Our tourism jobs are here for keeps. Titanic Belfast has trebled its workforce since it opened. The new hotels have given rise to new restaurants, more tour guides, and taxi drivers.
The story I love is of when I went to visit my egg supplier. Philip Clements. In Carrowdore. How many people have ever been to Carrowdore? Philip told me that when he got my egg order, it persuaded him to build a second hen house.
When is the last time Invest NI created jobs in Carrowdore? But tourism can.

Tourism is the purest form of export earnings. In no other sector do the visitors’ dollars, Euros and yen get so completely and comprehensively recycled into the local economy.
This is blindingly obvious – I hope. However, whilst tourism has doubled, the industrial sector has only increased by 15 per cent in terms of employment. Investments by Invest Northern Ireland in some of our largest manufacturers have too often been, in biblical terms, like the seed sown on stony ground.

Governments South and North, after the Good Friday Agreement, established Tourism Ireland, by any measure the most successful of the cross-border bodies. Collaboration between our tourism agencies has never been better. I pay tribute to Niall Gibbons from Tourism Ireland, and to John McGrillen from Tourism Northern Ireland, both of whom attended the Tourism Breakfast with other industry and government leaders.
Evidence of this collaboration was there also, as they, along with Failte Ireland colleagues have spearheaded our Taste The Island food marketing initiative, amazingly the first ever concerted North South domestic campaign. It has two further years to grow and develop into the international marketplace.

If we are to deliver redoubled growth, everyone has to play. Central government, local government, and private sector alike. It is time for the Department of the Economy to look at its return on investment from the industrial sector, and compare it with the returns achieved in recent times by the tourism and hospitality sector. And to ensure best value for the taxpayers’ money they administer, by investing where it can achieve the greatest return.

A prominent civil servant from the Republic once suggested to me that coming out of the troubles we were, in Northern Ireland, good at selling, but not that good at marketing. I disagree in part. We have some superb marketeers, but we have failed to make the case to central government that sustained investment in marketing is the missing and essential piece of the jigsaw.

When Tourism Ireland was formed, Northern Ireland contributed one third of the funding. Year on year the Northern Ireland government has systematically welshed on its commitments, and now, at the very time when we are poised to redouble our earnings, our government’s share of investment in Tourism Ireland has dwindled now to well below 20 .per cent. It’s a crying shame, it’s a disgrace, and it is time to do better.

So too, with Belfast City Council. In twenty years the Belfast Tourism economy has grown by 190 per cent. It drives 44 per cent of Northern Ireland’s visitors’ expenditure, and supports 30 per cent of its tourism jobs. How much of the additional £1.2 million business rates bill borne by these new hoteliers is being reinvested in marketing the city by Visit Belfast? Not a red cent. Indeed, so short-sighted are the City Hall officials that they are contemplating adding to my annual £1million rates bill by adding a third world style bedroom tax.

So it is time to look forward. Yes, existing and proposed hotel investments reflect our confidence in the future and our belief in Belfast. Our ambition is encapsulated in the new vibrant, colourful, and captivating marketing proposition soon to be launched by Tourism Northern Ireland.

It is time for local and central government to match the ambition of those who are creating and sustaining tourism jobs, and those who are standing by to tell the world about what we have here.
It is time to commit new capital from the City Deal to bring forward new visitor attractions, and to re-engineer the existing ones to accommodate the greater footfall they now enjoy.

Aisha Alnajjar

Aesha Alnajjar, a teenage refugee from Syria, who was one of our inaugural Belfast Young Ambassadors, spoke movingly at the opening event at Ulster University about her and her family’s experiences in fleeing war and resettling in Belfast.

I was so pleased and honoured to have been chosen as one of Belfast’s Young ambassadors of 2019 and privileged to receive the medal.

Homs
I’m from Homs city, the governorate’s capital, in central western Syria. Before the Syrian Civil War, Homs was a major industrial city. There are a number of historic mosques and churches in the city. We were living a normal life, my siblings and I were, as young children, going to schools and my father was working to provide the opportunities for us to learn and grow. Unfortunately, war turned Syria’s central city of Homs into a ghost town. The number of deaths and injuries has increased horribly. There are still a lot of imprisoned and tortured people in the jails of the regime. A lot of the local citizens have fled their home country to save their lives. We were one of them as we felt horrified and unsafe to stay. It’s difficult and painful to leave your own home and seek refuge in different countries with differences in everything. During the war, much of the city was devastated due to the Siege of Homs; reconstruction began in 2018 but still it takes time to rebuild the whole city. I still miss my home city where we used to celebrate our holidays with our relatives, neighbours and friends. I also miss our house, our home street, the mosques and my grandparents there.

Refugee Camps
Nine years of bombs and bullets have left thousands of families homeless and traumatized. Many of the kids in the Syrian refugee camps are quite pressured and traumatized by that time, suffering dire conditions from the sounds that they have heard, the bombings, and years of living under siege. Many of the families have lost their kids and many of the kids have lost their parents. Refugee camps have evolved for vulnerable Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to host those fleeing the violence and persecution in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted in March 2011.
My family and I were forced to escape our war-ravaged homeland in 2012 and we made it to Beirut in Lebanon where my dear father, who had been seriously injured as result of the war, passed away. We miss him so much. With the help of the UN we immigrated with other Syrian refugees to Northern Ireland in December 2015 under the Relocation of Vulnerable People Scheme. It was difficult to leave our home, we felt like we were away from the whole world we knew.

Belfast
However, Belfast is an amazing city with its fantastic people and a great diversity of cultures, nationalities and religions. When we saw people here welcoming us and smiling and that helped to make us feel safe and comfortable. Belfast is a peaceful and quiet city. While we are happy here, we would still like to go back to Syria if we could, as it is our home. We also miss my elder sister who is married with a family and still living in Lebanon. My family and I have settled well into life here in Northern Ireland. My elder brother is studying English as a second language at Belfast Metropolitan College and my younger brother is studying A-Levels at St Malachys College. I am starting a new life at Queen’s University Belfast studying for a degree in Biochemistry. I know it’s tough but it’s a quite interesting course. I would like to thank my mum for her caring and supporting to us, she is our great home. I consider Belfast is my second home here.
Thank you. Go raibh maith agat.