Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I regularly meet the IDA officials formally and informally. That would be a topic that came up. I have raised it with the chief executive again since we discussed it in the Dáil - I think it was last Wednesday or Thursday. Of course, I would like to see more site visits, but I again make the point that site visits are not the be-all and end-all. Many of the jobs that are announced are by existing companies growing and then taking on extra people. I have made this point to the Deputy previously.

He says that we give money to IDA Ireland. We also resource Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs in every county. We have a regional Action Plan for Jobs. Irrespective of whether he likes it and irrespective of whether he has read it, it is working. Those eight plans have transformed employment throughout the country. Of course, we want all boats to lift in the good tides. I want to ensure every region shares. However, the figures indicate that the south-east was a black spot; Waterford was an absolute black spot and we will see it improve.

I understand the figures for site visits as the Deputy does. However, we cannot bully the chief executives as to where they locate. Other aspects also need to be taken into consideration, including infrastructure and being close to an airport. In the Deputy's constituency Limerick is very attractive because it is near an airport. Some of them also want to be very close to the talent pool. In other cases they want to be within an ecosystem. For example, if fin-tech is located in the financial services area here in Dublin, I imagine that some of the fin-tech companies coming into Ireland as result of Brexit will be looking at that kind of area. That whole ecosystem is important.

The Deputy mentioned Kerry and we discussed this in the Dáil last week. Some 2,083 jobs are being supported by IDA Ireland in Kerry and the figure is 985 for Roscommon. I also pointed out to the Deputy last week that some rural counties do better than others. I know the Deputy picked out two, but other rural counties are doing very well. I will keep banging that drum. I met the Cavan-Monaghan Deputies and councillors. We are doing a review of all the IDA Ireland sites that are available in those two counties. We will continue to bang that drum. It is only in the past short number of years that we have seen employment grow. Up to that it was stagnant and before that hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs from 2008 to 2011. Of course, we keep a watching brief on it. I think we are going in the right direction. The IDA Ireland 2017 strategy commits to increase employment by between 30% and 40% in the regions.