Eighteen years is a long time to chase a dream. Particularly, as in Eamonn Donaghy’s case, one that is never going to make you either rich or famous.

It is even harder to chase a dream when a large percentage of people assume it is something of a fool’s errand. But Donaghy, as he likes to describe himself, has never been one to give up at the first hurdle.

Donaghy is head of KPMG’s tax practice in Belfast. A chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser, he deals in facts and figures, not flights of fancy, and it is not in his nature to get over-excited about . . . well anything, really.

But last Thursday Donaghy did something quite out of character.

He was literally swept away by events, by a moment in time which he believes will one day be as important for Northern Ireland as the Good Friday Agreement.

To find out why, you have to retrace Donaghy's steps back 18 years to when he wrote his first paper on why he believed corporation tax could be the key to helping Northern Ireland unlock its economic potential.

Back then he argued that if the North could offer a lower rate of corporation tax than anywhere else in the UK, it would attract a new generation of inward investors.

It is a well-rehearsed argument today but when Donaghy first started talking about corporation tax, it was a year before the Good Friday Agreement and a time when the daily depressing merry go round of local politics continued to overshadow the economy.

Defining moment

Donaghy exhortations fell largely on deaf ears: at the time political leaders were too busy fighting among themselves while the business community was more concerned with keeping its head down and surviving.

Those who did listen told him it would “never happen”, that it was a fanciful idea.

Donaghy was not the only one pushing the word on corporation tax rates. There were a few others.

In recent years, he has had the support of the key local business organisations, under the Grow NI initiative, to push for corporation tax powers to be devolved to the North's executive.

Last Thursday, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Theresa Villiers unveiled the Corporation Tax (NI) Bill which will grant the North the right to set its own rate of corporation tax from 2017.

For Donaghy and his fellow campaigners it was a defining moment because he believes it is going to change Northern Ireland’s future.

“This is about us looking to our future, about creating a new future for everyone. It is a step forward,” he says.

“This has never been about me. I used to sit on the train on the way up and down to Dublin and hear about all the inward investment announcements and see at first hand how the Republic was benefitting from millions of pounds of investment and I always thought why can we in Northern Ireland not have some of that too – just a bit of that?

“I mainly did this for my three kids. I want them and every other child to have a future in Northern Ireland and that’s why its important,” he said.

New tax regime

Donaghy said everyone involved in the Grow NI campaign will savour the arrival of the new Bill. But the real job now begins to start making a new corporation tax regime work.

Arlene Foster, the Enterprise Minister is planning to go to the United States in March to start talking up the new tax environment that will be on offer – well before it is in place.

The first question potential investors will want answered is what exactly the rate will be. That remains to be agreed.