Mr. Feargal O'Rourke:

With a chairman from Westmeath and a chief executive from Leitrim, the regions will not be forgotten in the IDA strategy. It has been very successful, particularly over the last ten years. As I mentioned, 54% of our IDA client employees are now outside the Dublin region. From a strategic perspective, we do not look at counties but at regions. We have eight regions we report on and all eight are ahead of target with regard to the objectives we set for the four-year strategy concluding at the end of this year. We talk about the past but this will probably continue into the future. The IDA has a regional property programme as well. It will look at having strategic sites and making sure business parks are fit for purpose. We are looking well into the future and asking what if we wanted a mega site somewhere of 1,000 acres rather than 100 acres. These are regionally balanced. Again, to put that in context, with the world moving to large urban centres and with Ireland, viewed in European terms, only having one or two big cities, the fact that we have managed to push so much into the regions is fantastic. In the past, where the private sector has not been able to stand up with regard to the construction of buildings, whether advance factories or advance office blocks, the IDA has stepped in and done that.

As part of our project, we will look at how we have done in regionalisation. As I said, we are ahead in all the eight regions already, but we will look forward and ask whether there are gaps. Of course, when people look at this they tend to say their town does not have a factory. To speak for my home town, if there is a factory in Athlone, it impacts on Roscommon, Longford, Westmeath, Offaly and east Galway. It has a pull effect. As the chairman, I try to look beyond counties or towns and look at regions and make sure the regions are well serviced.