Prime Minister’s questions in Portadown

Staff at Nacco Materials in Portadown had the chance to put the Prime Minister on the spot during his visit to Northern Ireland in November.  Questions to David Cameron covered business rates, high-speed broadband, youth unemployment, agriculture and trade.

One employee quipped that he was disappointed that the G8 was not coming to Lurgan, to which the PM replied: “I think I’m not going to please everyone today clearly.”  Cameron was critical of the size of the state in Northern Ireland and told staff that “the only way you keep taxes down in the long run is by controlling spending.”

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster took a question on closing gaps in broadband provision and explained that the Executive was working with the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport to deal with the problem.

On the risk of a ‘lost generation’, Cameron contrasted high Spanish youth unemployment with the low Dutch rate and pointed to the very restricted welfare state in the Netherlands.  The most recent youth unemployment rates are 55.9 per cent in Spain, 9.8 per cent in the Netherlands and 21.2 per cent in Northern Ireland.

High spending on the Common Agricultural Policy was “not sustainable in the long term” and farmers needed to innovate and move away from subsidies.

Concluding, he said that the absence of political questions shows that the real Northern Ireland “is a Northern Ireland of people who work hard, who want to get on, who want to build things for their families, who want to build strong communities.”