James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

I will be brief and ask this before we proceed to Deputy Hayes. We have much of the skill set in the room here from IDA Ireland on this particular matter. I am conscious IDA Ireland's clustering of different industries has been a huge success. In life sciences, for example, there have been enormous IDA success stories with Carrigtwohill and Little Island in my own constituency. I am always conscious that some peripheral towns like Youghal or other locations, without getting too parochial on this, have benefited from IDA advanced facilities and they have been enormously successful in bringing industry and employment into areas. There seems to be a bit of a drift from that policy. I know Ireland has to cater for large-scale, multinational firms, which have brought enormous levels of investment, corporation tax and economic success to the country, but there is an obligation on the Government to bring employment to regions that need it.

My home town was a hugely successful location for textiles. Kodak flash cameras were made there. Power Products made manufacturing products and around the turn of the millennium, more than 3,000 jobs were wiped out in Youghal. Since then, we have never had the IDA successfully return. I met with Martin Shanahan on this matter when he was chief executive and shortly before he took up his new role. I would love to see a return to that. On a policy level, while we have the manager of strategy and policy and the head of the strategic property department in the IDA, I would love to get a little insight on that particular topic.

I know the IDA is looking at three or four major sites nationally. How is that going? There is a huge importance for the country in that it works with local authorities. We had the board of directors of Cork Chamber of Commerce here recently and what the future of the Little Islands and Carrigtwohills would look like for the IDA was of great interest to them. It is the same for any region really, but is the IDA finalising the identification of future major-scale development locations?