Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The announcement of 1,000 new jobs at Amazon yesterday was fantastic. It is brilliant to see those high-tech jobs coming to Ireland, but my immediate reaction was to wonder where these employees will live. I listened to a vox pop on Radio 1 yesterday where people who were looking for housing were interviewed on the streets of Dublin. The Amazon jobs announcement was mentioned, and one of those being interviewed spoke of having to start looking for housing quickly because this would create much more competition. Some 200 jobs are being advertised immediately. Housing is definitely a factor.

A new advance factory was constructed in Castlebar, County Mayo. I am perhaps guilty of criticising the lack of IDA visits to my local town and constituency, although others are guilty of that as well. Obviously no company can be forced to locate in a particular area; we can only showcase what we have. The feedback we get from companies already located in the area is that the biggest challenges they face are infrastructure, the road network and communications, specifically broadband and mobile phone coverage. One of our local, very successful factories is the Allergan factory in Westport. I met the chief executive and some of the staff at the company who said Allergan loses some of its product during transport because the roads are so bad that it bangs off the inside of the truck. That is amazing to think about. The Westport factory competes with other divisions within Allergan internationally for specific contracts. I was told it is difficult to compete if it is pointed out that 2% of product is lost in transport. It would be helpful, to give a regional area any chance of competing, if the basic infrastructure was in place to enable a company to choose Mayo over Dublin or Donegal over Cork in order to balance development. All Departments should be applying pressure to have infrastructure provided because such competition will not be possible without broadband and proper roads, which I consider to be tier one basic infrastructure. While it is great to consider extensions to the DART, the Luas cross city and a second runway at Dublin Airport, we should first have the basics in place everywhere before moving on to what I consider to be tier two investment. The Department is probably hearing this all the time. I am sure it is trying to get companies to come and view our wonderful new facility that is lying empty.