Robin Newton MBE MLA

YOUNG people should be given incentives encouraging them into higher academic subjects such as science and mathematics at university.  This would build on the success of local students in the recent A Level results. This would result in a major economic boost thanks to medium term growth of much-needed technological and statistical expertise across the whole of Northern Ireland, said East Belfast DUP MLA, Robin Newton.

He said that local politicians and particularly the Minister responsible for the relevant department ought to be approaching both the young people themselves and potential ‘mentoring’ companies to get a ground-breaking scheme off the ground.

As Junior Minister in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and someone who has run their own business, Robin Newton has firm views: “I believe that both financial schemes such as bursaries and incentives from potential employers – such as guaranteed placement periods – would give a fillip to the current number of local undergraduates studying these much needed specialities and provide the encouragement for others to consider these areas of study.”

“While I am pleased to say that proportionally, Northern Ireland is already a leader in the number of students working for these cutting edge qualifications, more needs to be done,” he said.

Noting an intention to lobby Sir Reg Empey MLA, the Department of Employment and Learning Minister, he said: “Cash grants should be made available to these high-flyers and a scheme initiated which would ‘match’ undergraduates with employers from the earliest stages of their university courses.

“We must recognise that it is technological ‘added value’ products that are now the economic dynamo of the modern commercial world.

“To have any chance of success in developing marketable products from such commercial complexes as intended to be located within the Titanic Quarter, we must ensure that universities are accessible to the brightest of our young people.

“Then much needed science, economics and mathematics graduates can add wealth-earning potential for the whole of the Province in this technologically driven future.

“It is vitally important that as sophisticated developments like Belfast’s Titanic Quarter rise from the wasteland that was once our proud shipbuilding heritage, we are looked to the future, not the past,” he concluded.