Joe Kennedy III asks RFK Compass Investors to place their bets on Northern Ireland

The Kennedy family has been a symbol of Irish American prosperity for more than 100 years.

On Wednesday evening, Joseph P. Kennedy III – U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland – sought to reorient investors toward the homeland and spotlight what Northern Ireland has to offer during the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Compass Investors Summer Conference.

“Belfast is the safest mid-sized city in all of the United Kingdom,” said Kennedy, a former Massachusetts congressman who was named to the post last year. It’s also got a plethora of great golf, he joked.

But the country that endured nearly 30 years of sectarian violence – from the late 1960s to the 1998 Good Friday Agreements – offers an excellent investment opportunity.

Northern Ireland has the “single greatest concentration of cyber security in all of Europe,” he told the audience of nearly 250 from the lawn at the Kennedy compound.

“You’ve got a young population; a population with an incredibly high quality of life,” he said. “This is a population that has gone through hundreds of years of division and conflict and has come to 25 years of peace and prosperity. What they are looking for is the opportunity to bring stability and growth over the next 25 years.”

The RFK Summer Compass Investors Conference continues through Thursday in Chatham and Hyannis Port.