Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Business of Joint Committee
The Creative Economy: Discussion (Resumed)

1:30 pm

Mr. Patrick Walsh:

I wish to address the question about the regions. The chq building is interesting because it is at one of the main regional public transport hubs, which includes Busáras and Connolly Station. We get a lot of traffic from the regional start-up community coming through. Many people have started to ask us whether we can go to Cork, Galway or elsewhere in the country. We are thinking about that. Cork, for example, has produced two of the most exciting tech start-ups in the country. People are saying there needs to be more of these kinds of facilities, perhaps using vacant city council buildings or NAMA-controlled buildings. We have been open only since January so we are trying to catch our breath. We are certainly open to considering the regional option and believe there are very exciting developments regionally. They need the appropriate infrastructure.