Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have been selected to sit on this committee. I wish the Minister, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Breen and Halligan, the very best of luck in their time in office. My questions will follow on from some of the questions that were asked earlier.

I welcome the 10% increase in exports over the past 12 months. Now that exports have reached over €20 billion, it is of paramount importance that there is a growth in manufacturing.

When an economy starts producing and exporting equipment, it creates a form of solidity within the country and the economy and that is to be welcomed. The Minister referred to this in the context of construction and software, both of which, as a country, we have been noted for over the past ten to 15 years. I welcome the drop in the numbers on the live register and the continued momentum in generating employment, given the crash that we went through some years back. I am a returning emigrant who came back in 2013. I had to emigrate as a result of the crash. There are plenty of other emigrants coming back and availing of employment opportunities in the domestic economy and, beforehand, as a result of foreign direct investment.

Following on from Deputy Niall Collins’s question, there are vacant IDA Ireland properties around the country which may be 30 years old. Has an audit taken place of these properties? Has there been some analysis as to why these are vacant or how many site visits have been made to them? At what stage of the process did they drop out? Was it at the 10% stage of winning the business or at the 80% stage? Did they just drop out at the end of the pipeline? Has there been any analysis of this? If so, have any targets been set for these vacant properties?