Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

It is good to be able to broaden things away from the legislation. However, it is an opportunity to ask questions when the witnesses are here. I would like to talk a little about industrial policy. I note that the chairperson of the IDA is on the task force on infrastructure the Minister set up. A lot of that infrastructure relates to transport, the national grid and energy but crucially it is mainly about housing supply. I heard anecdotally that in a new development in my area, and this is me being very presumptuous, approximately 90% of the names of the people in a group within that development sound as if they came from outside Ireland. That is important in this context: there was a quote on the IDA website from John Ross, vice president of product, messaging at Zendesk:

Dublin is such a hub for big tech companies that you might think ‘if we come to Dublin, we’re going to be competing with all of them, we won't be able to get good staff’. But I think the opposite is true. Because we’ve got such a base of well recognised brands in Dublin, that actually brings qualified people from all over Europe here.

Regarding policy on, for example, software-localisation, these are all high-paying jobs. They are all in Dublin. If you are a nurse or a bus driver, whether you were born in Ireland or have come from overseas, you cannot compete with that level of earning power when it comes to property prices in the greater Dublin area. Does the industrial policy need to change? Going back to the days of T. K. Whitaker when we were trying to bring in people because we had a very knowledgeable base for manufacturing. We have already talked about the service industry and how that is creating jobs for people, which is well and good, but increasingly we are creating jobs we have to outsource for software-localisation. While this is welcome in terms of diversity and our overall wealth, it is placing huge pressure on the housing market. When it comes to being strategic in regard to housing, is there any thought in terms of policy on reinvigorating the old Quaker-style methodology where they built houses for staff, or looking at planning regulations that would allow the likes of Google to have a complex where people could live and work because they may be transient for two or three years before they look for housing?

Regarding the regions, with the expansion of the broadband network, if we are bringing a software company in, perhaps we need to look at targeting specific towns where we need to have people to invest in local services, and keep post offices and schools open. If we are going to have companies that will have a large input of people coming from overseas, as well as the jobs they are creating for workers already based in Ireland, maybe we need to focus them in areas where we need that population so as not to over-pressure the greater Dublin area where house prices are going up. Has that been thought about or will it feed into the task force? Have these type of social policy question been fed into IDA industrial policy?