Mr. Martin Shanahan:

I appreciate that and I thank Deputy Lyons for his earlier comments. Dublin is the only international city of scale we have. It has proven very attractive to international investors and we continue to win investment. It is not an either-or situation. Many of the companies that select Dublin will never move to a regional location. No matter what we offer them or how we present our offer, they will come to Dublin only. Dublin is attractive, vibrant and cosmopolitan and has been able to attract in much of the talent available. This brings me back to the comment I made earlier about the availability of talent. The fact companies can get multilingual, technology-savvy people in Dublin is much of the reason for this, because much of the business is technology based. Manufacturing remains important, but it is more likely to be regionally based and even if it is based in Dublin, it is on the outskirts or in Meath or Kildare, not the city centre.

The flow of investment into Dublin this year continues to be extremely strong and just as we have developed an action plan, with other stakeholders, for the regions, we are developing one for Dublin. We are in the process, with the local authorities, our sister agencies and other stakeholders, of developing a plan from the point of view of enterprise and jobs for Dublin. Deputy Lyons is right that Dublin remains the engine of growth and will remain so for some time. One of the issues facing us in Dublin is the pressure on commercial property availability. That said, in the central business district, the area between the two canals and the Barrow Street area, we have 1.82 million sq. ft. of grade A office buildings due to come on stream in the next 18 to 24 months. This will alleviate much of the pressure. We welcome the announcement by NAMA that it will invest in residential property because we see that lack as a potential constraint. The presence of a number of universities and institutes of technology in the Dublin region make Dublin very attractive in terms of talent availability, but also in terms of research an development. We continue to market Ireland as a research and development location and work closely with Science Foundation Ireland on that.

My assessment is that Dublin is very attractive as an international location. It is particularly attractive as an international location for technology and that reputation has travelled far and wide, given the global brand names we have based here.