Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What I referred to in relation to the south east was for last year. Last year the south east was either the best or the second best performing region in terms of jobs growth. That is from Central Statistics Office, CSO, data. It is a region that is catching up, and a region that is in the catch-up phase. I believe that the Government's investment in infrastructure, in roads, in the national broadband plan, in tourist infrastructure like the greenways and in the technological university is the kind of investment that is now helping a region that is behind other regions in the State to catch up. The Deputy will be aware of the hundreds of jobs announced in Waterford in the last year or so. Most of those jobs have yet to be created, but when they are, they will bring a lot of well-paid jobs into Waterford city. That will generate increased consumer spend and other jobs in that city. Over 1,000 jobs have been announced in Kilkenny in the last few months, including 300 by State Street in financial services and the best part of 1,000 by Abbott in pharma. Kilkenny, which is a relatively small city of 15,000 to 20,000 people, is seeing a huge level of investment, which I think is very encouraging.

I need to be frank about IDA jobs. IDA jobs gravitate towards the large cities. That is true the world over. It is not something that we can change, and we need to be honest and realistic about that. In Austria, Denmark or any other country, large multinational companies tend to locate their large facilities in major population centres. They want to know that there are 1 million or 1.5 million people within commuting distance. They want to know how many universities there are and how many international airports there are. That is the kind of thing they want to know. If we judge the south east only by IDA jobs, the south east and other regions will always be behind. However, there is more to the economy than IDA jobs. There are Enterprise Ireland jobs. One of the biggest investments I am seeing at the moment on that front is the Glanbia-Royal A-Ware investment in Waterford Port for the new plant, which I had the honour to turn the sod on. It is not all about the IDA. Enterprise Ireland jobs are important too, as are tourism, agriculture and the small business sector. It is wrong to judge a region just based on FDI, which will always gravitate to the very large cities.

We would be interested in exploring the idea of having a south-east development commission. I think the jury is out on whether such initiatives are hugely successful. The Western Development Commission does some really useful work. It is doing really good stuff around remote working hubs at the moment. We heard Senator Crowe, earlier in this discussion, pointing out that the western region has actually fallen behind, and is ranked lower by the EU than the south-east region under the metric that he referenced. We had a body like that for the mid-west, Shannon Development, but a decision was made to go in a different direction. I think the jury is out on whether having a regional body of that nature is hugely successful. I would like to see that weighed up independently before making a call on it.