Mr. Barry O'Leary:

They are not remote offices. Management changes. One does not need a director. We do not have the luxury in our ten offices of having directors. We have amalgamated to get critical mass.

However, I accept that the south east has indeed suffered. While overall over the past four years, employment by FDI companies has grown quite significantly, in certain regions, particularly the south east, it has not. There have been new investments in the south east. After all, Merck, Sharpe and Dohme in Carlow did not exist four years ago and it has over 400 staff on site. The same is so with Unum in Carlow, which has 100 staff.

In Waterford, we announced a project to employ 200 staff from Nypro earlier this year and we also backed a €45 million investment by Sanofi. In addition, in Wexford, we have supported both BNY Mellon and Zurich, and Coca Cola in recent times. However, I accept that in the south east we are definitely not landing as much business as we would like to.