Mr. Martin Shanahan:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it. I am accompanied by Ms Mary Buckley, executive director, Mr. Kieran Donoghue, head of global financial services and strategic policy, and Ms Regina Gannon, chief financial officer. The committee has indicated that the focus of this session is on the 2014 IDA annual report. I will make some brief introductory remarks on this and will provide the committee with some up to date information on 2015 and current activity.

The committee is obviously aware that IDA Ireland is the Government agency responsible for attracting foreign direct investment, FDI. In 2014, the year under review, we reported a very positive year from an FDI perspective. Just over 15,000 new jobs were created by IDA client companies during 2014. When job losses were taken into account, the net increase in employment was just over 7,000. A total of 197 investments were won in 2014, equating to a 20% increase on 2013. There was a notable rise in greenfield investment, with 88 new name investors coming to Ireland in 2014, equating to a 13% increase on the previous year. There were 174,488 people employed in IDA client companies at the end of 2014, the highest level in the history to date of IDA Ireland. Among the leading investments secured during 2014 were Amazon, Bristol Myers Squibb, Fidelity, LinkedIn, Survey Monkey, Airbnb, PayPal, Ericsson, SAP, Johnson & Johnson, West Pharmaceuticals, Zendesk, Adroll and New Relic. Some of those investments are regional investments and I will elaborate on some regional announcements in 2014. They included Jazz Pharmaceuticals in County Roscommon, Becton Dickinson in Drogheda, NuVasive in Waterford, Teleflex in Athlone and ClearStream Technologies in Enniscorthy. Particularly strong performances were posted by several regions, notably the north east and south west.

While the results in the 2014 report relate to direct employment, IDA Ireland estimates that an additional 122,000 jobs are supported indirectly by IDA client companies, widening the economic spin-off. This is based on a multiplier of 0.7. It is also estimated that approximately 10,000 people were employed on construction projects under way with IDA client companies in 2014, providing a considerable economic boost to the areas in which that construction activity was undertaken.

In February 2015, IDA Ireland announced its new strategy for the next five years entitled, Winning: Foreign Direct Investment 2015-2019. The target of this strategy is to increase investment by 40%. IDA Ireland aims to win 900 individual projects, creating 80,000 new jobs in the economy over the next five years. This will be based on an ability to respond to clients' needs efficiently, effectively and ahead of the competition. These are ambitious targets and if they are delivered, they will bring total direct employment by overseas companies in Ireland to 209,000 people by 2019. This will obviously deliver wide-ranging economic benefits for the people of Ireland.

IDA Ireland is targeting a 20% increase in spending by overseas firms within Ireland during the life of the next strategy. In particular, IDA Ireland is committed to showcasing the capabilities of Irish industry to its client companies as a source of products, services, technology and innovation. A 20% increase in cumulative spend on research and development is also being targeted. This would mean a €3 billion spend on research and development over the life of the strategy. We view this as feasible as overseas companies place additional high-value added activity and research into Ireland. A key element of the IDA Ireland strategy over the next five years is a focus on increasing investment in regional locations outside of Dublin. IDA Ireland has set a target to increase investments in all regions outside of Dublin by 30% to 40%. This target is extremely challenging given that the global trend is towards FDI locating in large urban areas of scale. IDA Ireland is implementing a range of measures to achieve this objective.

Increasing globalisation, technological developments and geopolitical influences have resulted in a worldwide FDI portfolio that is in a constant state of flux and transformation. New sectors will emerge, some existing sectors will thrive and others will decline. The past ten years alone have witnessed many such changes. We have seen global business services develop into a key driver of FDI. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector has been transformed with the reduction in lower value-add activities and a new focus on high value-add manufacturing and research and development. The manufacturing sector remains very strong with 23% of Ireland's GDP attributable to manufacturing activity. This figure is high in a European context. Ireland is particularly strong in high-value and highly-regulated zero-defect manufacturing. Ireland's future FDI success will require bolstering existing sectors, exploiting new opportunities and replacing declining activities. A critical element of IDA Ireland's new strategy will be a continued strong focus on the traditional key sectors of technology, encompassing everything from hardware through to software and the Internet; life sciences, which includes pharma, bio-pharma and medical devices; international financial services; media and content; engineering; business services; and food. IDA Ireland will continue to help support these sectors to thrive by winning new investors as well as partnering with clients to explore development opportunities.

While IDA Ireland will maintain its current sector focus supported by detailed sectoral strategies, it will also look towards new sources of FDI. Many exciting opportunities exist at the point where the sectors in which we have existing strengths converge and intersect. Given Ireland's scale and the strength in these sectors, IDA Ireland believes there is significant scope to capitalise on these opportunities. The rapid growth of technology is seeing a wave of new opportunities which Ireland is perfectly positioned to exploit. Trends towards cloud, social, mobile and data analytics are having a profound impact across a range of sectors.

We will seek to exploit those opportunities in future.

IDA Ireland is looking to other sectors to widen the flow of investment into Ireland as the foreign direct investment, FDI, sector changes, expands and develops over the next five years. Key targets over this time period will be the marine economy, investments linked to infrastructure, property, arts and culture and energy services. Long-term investments made by the Government in areas such as infrastructure, education and technology have underpinned the attraction of FDI to date. These investments created the environment within which we are marketing to companies and we need that level of investment to continue in order to remain competitive. We need a continued focus on investment in skills, property and infrastructure in order to replicate past successes.

The US continues to be the key source market, with 70% of FDI coming from there. Europe is our second-largest market, with 20% of FDI originating there. The US economy is performing strongly now but Europe is not performing as strongly and it is much more subdued. Approximately 10% of investments come from the remainder, which is what we term emerging or growth markets. That includes the Asia-Pacific area, Brazil and Russia.

The strong performance in 2014 has continued into 2015. Final results for 2015 will not be available until January next year but we published some interim results mid-year, which demonstrated that 110 investment projects were approved, with 9,000 jobs associated with them in the first six months of the year. This compares with 100 investments for the same period in 2014 and 8,000 direct jobs. The flow of investments is ahead and I can confirm that the performance has continued into the second half of the year. A notable feature of announcements in the first half of 2015 were the large number of investments, particularly with a capital-intensive element, going to locations outside Dublin. Currently, 59% of employment in the FDI portfolio is outside Dublin. Approximately half of the investments to the mid-year point were new-name investments into Ireland. A long list of companies have announced investments, although not all companies do so. They include the Johnson & Johnson Vistakon plant in Limerick, which is investing €100 million into expansion; DePuy Synthes of Johnson & Johnson, investing €53 million, with 80 new jobs; Northern Trust, with 300 jobs in Limerick; Facebook, seeking planning for a new data centre in Clonee in Meath; Agora Publishing setting up with 100 jobs in Portlaw in Waterford; Viagogo, expanding in Limerick with 200 jobs; Zimmer investing €51 million in Oranmore, creating 250 jobs; ABEC Inc going into Fermoy, north Cork, with 100 jobs associated with the project initially; Apple going into Athenry, announcing what will be one of the largest data centres in Europe when it is finished, with €850 million invested; Alexion Pharmaceuticals announcing that it will build its first biologics plant outside the US in Blanchardstown, west Dublin; Zalando, a Berlin company, setting up in Dublin, creating 200 jobs; and Slack, one of the many information technology companies from San Francisco - a high-growth company - setting up its European headquarters in Dublin, creating 100 jobs.

The Comptroller and Auditor General signed off on the annual accounts on 29 May 2015. The total funding for 2014 was €130.8 million. Our employment control framework number of 272 staff in 2014 was operated within during the year.

The immediate pipeline is encouraging across a range of sectors but we take nothing for granted. Every single job created in Ireland by overseas companies is hard-fought both by us and the subsidiaries of the companies based here already. They are won against ever-increasing competition from a growing range of overseas locations that are becoming more sophisticated in their offerings and marketing activity. We need to be vigilant and avoid complacency, particularly in the area of cost competitiveness, which is one of the key metrics that companies consider when they are coming to Ireland. A poor growth outlook for Europe will also be a challenge. I mentioned the importance of investment in education and training, as a supply of talented graduates will be an element on which we will either win or lose investment. Despite a challenging environment, IDA Ireland is confident the out-turn for 2015 will be reasonably strong and we have a very clear strategy for 2015 to 2019. The performance to date and the strong announcements this year are based on the work of the IDA Ireland team across the globe, both here in Dublin and in 19 other locations. They are the people who go out and win the investments.