BELFAST BRIEFING:THE ECONOMIC cloud hanging over the Republic could contain a silver lining for Northern Ireland firms who want to recruit highly trained and experienced staff.

Bro McFerran, president of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, is urging local firms to “seize the day”.

He believes businesses need “to rebuild confidence, forget the past, start looking for positives and plan for a better future”.

One way they can do this, says McFerran, is by making sure they have the right people in place to “grasp the business opportunities where and when they appear”.

He believes there is a “strong case for a bit of blue sky thinking” about medium- to long-term business opportunities amidst the gloom.

McFerran says although the instinctive response of some companies is to “circle the wagons”, this is the wrong approach.

He does not believe the global economic downturn will be the ruin of essentially solid local firms. “Businesses in Northern Ireland are very resilient, they have had to come through a lot in the last 30 to 40 years and this will show when the tide goes out who doesn’t have their shorts on,” he said.

McFerran is both an entrepreneur and a corporate high-flyer. He set up his own IT services company Logicom in Northern Ireland in 1980 and successfully ran the business until he sold it in 1997.

McFerran then joined the IMRglobal Corporation, an IT outsourcing company based in Clearwater, Florida, before returning to join Allstate’s new Northern Ireland subsidiary in 1999. Allstate is the largest publicly-held personal lines insurer in North America. Under McFerran’s leadership its Northern Ireland subsidiary has grown to become the largest IT firm in the North employing 1,500 people in Belfast, Derry and Strabane.

McFerran believes Northern Ireland is better placed than “the UK mainland and the Republic” to weather the economic downturn. “It depends on the business you are in – if you are in retail or construction then of course it is not going to be easy. But I hope we will avoid the catastrophic job losses that we have seen in some parts.

“I do subscribe to the theory that the large public sector in Northern Ireland will insulate us to some extent from the economic slowdown – but the question is to what extent? It may not be quite as hard for us here but there is no doubt there will be more job losses and unemployment is going to rise,” he said.

But McFerran also believes some companies may find opportunity in adversity. “Take our own business – we are doing very nicely thank you for a number of reasons. First where the pound is sitting at this time makes it very attractive for our parent company to outsource to us and also our own attrition rates are down – so our costs are down,” he said.

He says Northern Ireland firms should be taking advantage of its “cultural closeness” with the United States to win new outsourcing business when corporations are seeking to cut costs and overheads.

McFerran believes US companies will continue to outsource regardless of the wave of protectionism sweeping through corporate America because it makes economic sense.

“You only have to look at the growth of our business over the last 10 years and the appetite our parent company has for outsourcing to Northern Ireland and to India. We deliver right across the board when it comes to quality, customer service and cost – in some cases by 30 to 40 per cent less. We can deliver better bang for their buck and that’s what matters.

“The other big attraction is that Northern Ireland is a place people like coming to – they come on business and they stay and do tourist trips so we work hard on creating happy cultural relationships,” McFerran added.

McFerran is concerned that although Allstate has no problem finding talented graduates, recruiting “good experienced people to run projects” is harder.

That is where McFerran believes the Republic’s loss could be Northern Ireland companies’ gain. McFerran is hoping to attract about 100 experienced IT professionals.

“In the past experienced IT staff in Dublin wouldn’t consider moving unless they were getting share options, being paid a fortune and would be millionaires in five years time – now they have much more realistic expectations. There are lots of reasons why people should consider moving from Dublin to Belfast or Derry at this time,” he added.