Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for giving his time on this matter. I am conscious that the negotiations are in a sensitive place, so I will not comment specifically on them. When they are finalised and, hopefully, a good arrangement is in place, the Minister needs to come back to the committee to outline the sequence of events that have led us to this position. We wish the negotiations well. The comments of the outgoing chief executive officer of IDA Ireland were completely inappropriate. For him to interfere in a specific situation, particularly when he was leaving the organisation, was inappropriate and unfair to everyone involved, particularly the workers for whom much is being asked. We have a cross-party report on the south east which needs to be revisited. The Bausch and Lomb episode shows how vulnerable the economy is there.

I have been raising with the Minister for some time the fact that this country heavily depends on the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries and it is one of our major employers. How vulnerable are these jobs to companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals which took over Bausch and Lomb? It is currently involved in an aggressive takeover of Allergan, another Irish-based company. Has the Minister a strategy in place for dealing with the vulnerability of jobs with takeovers from companies such as Valeant?

I wish Martin Shanahan every success as the new chief executive officer of IDA Ireland.