Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this issue. I also thank the Minister for attending and giving this issue the serious consideration it deserves.

This decision by the Government has enormous implications for future industrial policy in Ireland. It demands an immediate response for those of us who need to know the future direction of Government industrial policy. The Minister can be assured of some degree of support, as Deputy Howlin indicated, in initially questioning how inward investment to Ireland is regulated at EU level. However, the Minister has contacts at European Council level and at the Commission and cannot have been unaware of feelings among the Commission and other member states to which Ireland needs to respond if it is to frame an industrial policy for the future.

Members on this side of the House believe it was the intention of the enterprise strategy group that we should not only recognise that foreign direct investment has brought many jobs to Ireland and has the potential to bring more, but must also accept the need to reduce our reliance on it. The enterprise strategy group recommended that indigenous companies based on research and development must be encouraged to a greater extent, not in substitution for foreign direct investment but to enable us to avoid in future circumstances like those under discussion.

I concur with Deputy Howlin in what I would like to hear from the Minister. I wish to know what will be the immediate impact of the Government's action on other projects. A similar package is in place for Centrecore which the Government seems confident will be approved in its current form. Surely, questions must be asked about the feasibility of pursuing State grant assistance for projects such as the one involving Johnson and Johnson which appears comparable to the project the Government proposed for Intel. We require more information if we are to proceed further in establishing worker confidence in the companies involved and general business confidence in the direction of the State's industrial policy.

In the brief time available to him, it is hoped that the Minister can provide the House with a brief overview of the status of the enterprise strategy group's recommendations. Many Members had hoped that unlike its predecessors, the Culliton and Telesis reports, the group's report would include a strategy to implement its recommendations. We hoped it was not a report which was likely to remain unconsulted on a library shelf for years to come. While the Minister might argue that upwards of 70% of the report's recommendations are being implemented in one form or other, some of the 30% which have not been implemented are key recommendations of the enterprise strategy group on the organisation of Enterprise Ireland, that IDA Ireland and Forfás should be brought under the same umbrella and that there should be different arms dealing with marketing and technology.

While we are all concerned at the nature of the impasse with which we are faced and its impact on industrial policy, I would like the Minister to articulate how the opportunity to recast Irish industrial policy to give birth to ideas expressed in the report of the strategy group and those of its predecessors will be seized. At last, we can begin to offer the support necessary for indigenous Irish industry to facilitate research and development. In a decade or two, we should be able to point to successes in the Irish economy and to a company in the high technology sector which is the equivalent of Nokia in Finland.

Unfortunately, the above is indicative of the gap which exists here. While we are reacting to the immediate implications of the Commission decision for foreign direct investment, we should be thinking about how to develop investment opportunities within the economy. I would like to hear a positive contribution from that perspective from the Minister.

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