Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 December 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Foreign Direct Investment and Jobs Growth: Discussion

5:00 pm

Mr. Martin Shanahan:

No. It is a combination of clients coming with a reasonably set understanding of what Ireland is about and where they want to be located. That might be based on knowledge or research they have done themselves and, in some cases, they ask the IDA to showcase what we have available. It tends to be an iterative process where we put forward something and they say "yes", "no" or "maybe". We have moved to a situation where some companies do not visit the site at all. I always caution about using the number of site visits. There could be one site visit and one investment, and there could be ten site visits and no investment. We have an increasing phenomenon where, in a connected world, companies can do any amount of due diligence from the west coast of the US or Germany. We have had investments where there have been no boots on the ground at all. It is a combination of factors.

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