Mr. Martin Shanahan:

I will take the matters in the order in which the Deputy put them. The competitiveness factors the Deputy mentioned are all a concern for the IDA, and will continue to be a concern. We will never resolve them because there will always be somebody else doing other things.

To return to something I said in response to Deputy Calleary, the talent availability will determine Ireland's success in attracting, or not attracting, foreign direct investment into the future. That is where investors are focused. They want to be able to set up in a jurisdiction, attract talent quickly and be able to scale up and add to that talent quickly. Focusing on education and skills, ensuring that we perform in the rankings and ensuring that we have the right match between skills availability and the demands of our client base are really important. We spend much time articulating what those demands are. We liaise with the Department of Education and Skills, SOLAS, and the Higher Education Authority, HEA, on a regular basis to try to ensure that matching. Obviously, the performance of our universities internationally is important in that regard.

However, what comes through our university or institute of technology systems or through the apprenticeship system is not the only source of talent. Another source of talent is the fact that we have access to a European labour market of 200 million people who are free to come and work in Ireland. More important than the fact that they can come and work here without impediment is the fact that they want to come and work here. Ensuring that Ireland remains attractive and open and is marketing itself to those talents and skills, including returning Irish people who may have left for economic or other reasons over the recent past, is hugely important.

We have seen some increases in commercial rents. However, there is variability in the market, so the significant increases are largely isolated to particular areas of Dublin, for example, and close to what is termed the silicon docks, where there have been increases. There is still very good value to be had in Ireland and in Dublin, outside of that area, and, indeed, outside Dublin. The same can be said about residential rents. Residential rents within the city centre and close to the central business district, if one can term it that way, have risen, but there is really good value still available outside that area and outside Dublin.

Essentially, that speaks to why we set out the strategy we outlined back in February. We intend to target the same high level of investment into Dublin, but we want all of the increase in investment to happen outside of Dublin.

There are good social and economic reasons for doing that. The social reason is to spread wealth creation and the availability of employment into the regions. The economic reason is that if we keep putting all the increased investment into Dublin we will meet some of the constraints the Deputy mentioned, with higher prices on the residential and commercial sides. Our strategy is to try to push that investment out of Dublin. We want Dublin to be successful and are achieving a high level of investment into Dublin, and the flows this year show that. It is not a competition between Dublin and the rest of the country. We could achieve high levels of investment into Dublin and into the rest of the country. That is the objective. The more we spread it, the more we will achieve value for investors, who will reinvest if they receive a return on investment.

We use a somewhat similar approach to the one the Deputy outlined of companies decamping from Silicon Valley. We call it a second-site approach. Companies may have invested, or be planning to invest, in Dublin because there is activity they wish, or need, to undertake in Dublin but there may also be activities they can carry out in a regional location. That is what we seek to do.

The national spatial strategy is in the past and there are plans for a new approach. We had an opportunity in our strategy to set out our plans and had some regard to the previous spatial strategy, but our approach is to achieve a 30% to 40% increase in each of the regions. In the regional Action Plan for Jobs we have set out in more detail some of the things that need to happen in order to develop the regions.

I am not sure about volatility, but there is an increase in the corporation tax take.