asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will take steps to make job support schemes more attractive to employers in order to create more jobs.

Consultants were commissioned last autumn to examine the effectiveness of the present incentives to industrial investment by existing or prospective employers in Northern Ireland, and the Government are now studying their findings. Meanwhile, I should point out that these incentives are the most generous in the United Kingdom, and their attractiveness is shown by the number of new jobs promoted since they were last reviewed in August 1977.