Mr. John Hughes:

Certainly. On the next gen sites, we are currently negotiating the revisions to the national development plan. Clearly, a quantum of resources will be required for the next generation sites, which might involve three large-scale sites that will be much bigger than the Intel campus we are all familiar with. There will be significant planning, utility and infrastructure requirements so that is all being negotiated with the revision of the NDP.

On the question on clustering, two things occurred to me. We have funding in the Department this year for a national cluster policy. We are looking to develop and, in quarter 3, launch three particular clusters at a national level as a pathway to further clustering. In the context of Irish companies in regional and rural locations, when the Minister, Deputy Burke, launched Silicon Island, the national semiconductor strategy in May, we had four companies represented in the discussion on the strategy. Two of them are Irish-owned companies, one of which has grown to more than 100 employees in a short period. They are both in the west of Ireland, in Galway. We hope to see more happening in the regions. The previous IDA annual report showed that 59% of its investments were in regional locations. We are looking to see that encompass supports for rural locations, directly or indirectly.