Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

It is a fact. Competitive issues impact on our constituencies. On 28 June, I raised under Standing Order 32 the threat to 120 jobs in Molex Ireland in Millstreet, but unfortunately my request to adjourn the Dáil to debate the issue was ruled out of order. Since then, the job losses have been announced and 120 people in this small north Cork town face a new year of uncertainty and unemployment, as do their colleagues in Abbott Ireland in Galway. Molex Ireland is just one example of companies in rural areas relocating to more favourable locations due to competitive and cost issues.

Ireland has lost considerable cost competitiveness in the past five years and is no longer viewed as a prime location in which to do business. Rural areas will continue to suffer most at the hands of a Government which has failed to manage these issues and provide suitable infrastructure in rural areas. Deputies referred to roads and broadband. A report published by Agri Aware this week on the future of the Irish economy, particularly in rural areas, points out that one of the significant characteristics of Irish economic performance in the past couple of decades has been the imbalanced nature of economic activity and development, with the eastern seaboard doing significantly better than most other parts of the country.

To date the national spatial strategy has not succeeded in achieving its objectives of generating more balanced regional development. Rural areas are still not seeing the sort of infrastructural investment necessary to generate economic activity. Rural Ireland is still not a focus of policies aimed at innovation and economic dynamism. Take for example infrastructure as basic as broadband and roads. Many parts of my constituency still await the roll-out of first generation broadband. We have heard the Government speak of third and fourth generation broadband. We certainly feel as if we are on the hind tit in rural Ireland.

Macroom and Charleville, towns in my constituency, desperately need a bypass. The Macroom bypass is not on the Government's inter-urban routes or the Atlantic gateway and we have been told recently by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, that we will have to wait at least until 2015 before that is completed.

The nature of EU funding is changing. I notice that the Gaeltacht areas in my constituency will not have a more competitive advantage in terms of relocating industry than any other part of the country. That is a further failure of a Government that has paid lip service to the Irish language.

A small industrialist in my constituency paid more than €300,000 per annum for electricity supply. Last year he negotiated a new supply at significantly less cost for the units of electricity he would consume. However, because of regulator charges, over which the Government has presided he has to pay in addition to the cost of the units, of the order of €60,000 to €70,000 to a regulator, so that his net bill for electricity has increased. That is a damning indictment of a Government that professes to care about economic competitiveness and is evidence in a single case of how the Government has failed.

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