Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will move on because I am short on time and there are some other areas which I want to address. In his opening remarks and the reports which he has submitted to the committee, Mr. Shanahan put a lot of emphasis on the regional aspect. It is an old chestnut for many public representatives and statutory bodies throughout the country. Some statistics were included in the response to a parliamentary question which my party tabled some weeks ago which showed that of the 323 IDA Ireland site visits thus far this year, 155 or 48% took place in the capital. Five counties, some of which still have excessively and stubbornly high rates of unemployment, received just one IDA Ireland visit so far this year. Two counties, one of them my own county of Meath, received none. In the sections of IDA Ireland's document, Winning: Foreign Direct Investment 2015-2019, which are specifically about the regions, it talks about the existence of clusters and critical masses of population and it sets out criteria in this regard. The big thing for major centres and provincial towns is actually to create these clusters in the first instance. If a commuter county on the edge of Dublin such as Meath is unable to achieve that, what hope is there for other counties?

When I look at the statistics and go through the list of counties which have only received one visit, I see Donegal, Monaghan, Offaly and Roscommon. The report mentions the wins which were achieved in 2016. It references Shire and Facebook. Is that the kind of thing we are looking at for the regions? Mr. Shanahan knows exactly where those locations are. They are right on the Border. They are not beside the clusters of population the development plans set out to create. Are back office facilities such as those being provided for Facebook all we can expect in the regions and the wider geographical area?