Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 December 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

IDA Ireland Annual Report 2014: Discussion

1:30 pm

Photo of Robert TroyRobert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for indulging me with the opportunity to raise a few questions given that I am not a member of the committee. It is great to have the opportunity. I will be very parochial in terms of my constituency of Longford-Westmeath. Mr. Shanahan is right when he says the decision on where a company will locate ultimately rests with the company. However, to use a simplistic comparison, if a person were to ask an auctioneer to sell a house in the morning and realised it was not being marketed or shown to buyers but an alternative house was being shown at every opportunity, he or she would not be too long telling the auctioneer he was not doing his job well and giving the house to a competing auctioneer to sell.

In my constituency, there have been two IDA Ireland visits to Longford. How can Mr. Shanahan expect anyone to locate to a place if it is not advertised and potential clients are not brought to see all it has to offer? We can compare Longford to Westmeath, and I acknowledge that Athlone is thriving. Yesterday, we had the announcement of 200 new jobs associated with the expansion of DPD Ireland. This is fantastic news. However, do we have a capacity issue? Do we have sufficient IDA Ireland lands for future expansion of the IDA Ireland park in Athlone?

Seven or eight years ago IDA Ireland purchased a 68 acre site in Mullingar, which is closer to Dublin and presumably an easier sell. It kitted out the site to the last and put in the necessary roads and infrastructure, including broadband, but the site has not been marketed. Has IDA Ireland considered the need for a purpose-built innovation centre in the park? If an innovation centre was in place, a person with a good idea would not have to wait for the planning and tendering processes to complete and for the development to go out to construction. I am sure Mr. Shanahan will agree that someone who is looking to locate will not wait for 12 or 18 months while we get our house in order to provide a facility. Will IDA Ireland consider the park in Mullingar as an appropriate location for an innovation centre?

Mr. Shanahan referred to the figure of 23% when speaking about manufacturing. Is it that 23% of GDP is from manufacturing or that 23% of our employment is created in the manufacturing industry? Is Mr. Shanahan concerned about the increase in labour and energy costs and development levies? Are we retaining our competitiveness in terms of manufacturing? My understanding is that many manufacturing jobs are leaving Ireland and relocating to countries where labour and energy costs are much lower than they are here.

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