Had a similar if not same issue while developing a plugin. Fixed it by adding
<systemProperties> <localRepository>${repository.integrationtests}<localRepository> <systemProperties> to surefire plugin configuration in IT phase. Works for me with surefire-plugin 2.9 and invoker-plugin 1.5 Regards, Ansgar Am 31.07.2011 13:50 schrieb "Dennis Lundberg" <denn...@apache.org>: