The optimistic economic assumptions of the immediate post-war period had already been confounded by the time Pollock took office . His input to the Northern Ireland special arbitration committee ( 1923 – 5 ) established to review the province 's funding and chaired by Lord Colwyn , ensured that Northern Ireland would be able to keep parity of social benefits with the rest of the United Kingdom , but he was unable , in the depressed conditions of the inter-war years and under the newly agreed formula , to bring Northern Ireland 's underdeveloped services , in education , health , housing , and general infrastructure , up to the national level . Still , his judicious use of the loans guarantee acts , well into the 1930s , did keep up a measure of activity in a shipbuilding industry that might otherwise have perished . In 1932 he attended the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa as an advisory member of the British delegation headed by Stanley Baldwin . He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1936 in respect of the vast impact he made on the Northern Irish political and economic landscape
Imperial Economic Conference
British Empire Economic Conference
Hugh MacDowell Pollock