Mr. Leo Clancy:

We are, Chairman. In 2022, the north west grew by 2% in terms of employment and the north east grew by 2%. In the prior year, though, the north west had been one of our highest performing regions. The highest-performing regions in terms of job growth in 2021 were the north west, west and south east outside of Dublin. Therefore, they are good.

Specific measure we are taking include the investments I mentioned earlier in regional enterprise development funded type projects, where we can collaborate locally to make sure there is a future pipeline of businesses. I will come to Mr. Murphy in a minute to comment on how we focus on the regions from a LEO perspective.

We always focus on regions, however, particularly those regions that have the lowest employment per capita. We are very supportive, in that we have various levers we can use to encourage employment. One of those is employment in capital grants. We can give grants to companies for new employment and new capital. We tend to go as far as we possibly can within value for money in grants to those regions because we know it is harder to get investment in there and we want to encourage every job we can.