Dear Department for Business and Trade,

I initially sent an FOI request to your colleagues at the NIO. They have advised me that their records do not enable them to answer but have advised that the Department for B&T will have the information requested.

My questions:

1. How many invites were issued for the Investment Conference held in Belfast on 13 September?

2. How many invites were accepted and ultimately what was the total number of attendees of the Investment Conference held in Belfast on 13 September?

3. Of those attendees of the Investment Conference held in Belfast on 13 September please share the numbers of those who work or are associates of Dept of B&T, NIO and Invest NI respectively?

Please include those who were presenting / hosting

4. how many invitees that attended the Investment Conference on 13 September were female (inc identifying as female) and how many male?

5. how many key note speakers and plenary session leads at the Investment Conference, held on 13 September in Belfast, were female?

Yours faithfully,

Mark Dally

Dear Information Rights Unit,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my enquiry. Your response was dated 16 November 2023.

Apologies for replying a relatively long period from when I received your response, but in the intervening period I have not been particularly well so hence the delay.

Turning to the matter in hand. Whilst I appreciate the time taken by your team to respond I fear that they have misunderstood and conflated their response to my questions 1 and 3 and inadvertently not provided the information I asked for.

I’ll explain:

- question 1 asked how many invites were issued? (I presumed everyone person who entered the venue would have had to have had an invite. Regardless of their role or organisation or location)

- question 3 asked of those attending how many worked or were associates of your org or NIO or INI including those who presented or hosted? (I assumed for such a large event that officials from the 3 ‘departments’ listed would have been invited to attend as a host / chaperone / informed public officer etc)

The way in which the response was constructed means that whilst you told me the number of invites you didn’t answer the question where I was seeking info on ALL in attendance.

It is my understanding from your response that whilst there were 181 invited international ‘delegates’ in attendance (743 invited) you have not commented / answered my question as to how many people were there in total. You’ve chosen to provide a subset ie international delegates. A subset I didn’t actually ask for.

Question A
So as you’ve unilaterally chosen to report just international delegates then please can you complete the set and provide the numbers of all non international delegates?

I believe there were far more than 181 people in attendance than you quote. As you have only chosen to refer to international delegates.

Question B
I also asked in question three for the number attending including employees and associates of your Dept, NIO and InvestNI? As explained above please can this original question be answered as whilst there were invited delegates i assume there were officials playing some form of hosting role. It appears you didn’t see these as delegates.

Question C
Finally in addition to the 2 repeat requests above please could you split the number of non international invites and non international attendees (delegates and hosts etc) into male and female.

Please can the gaps in your response be addressed as a priority as whilst I recognise my own health has held up this request for correction the Information is key to a wider set of work of mine.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

mark dally