Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The issues are to do with what many of these companies are now looking for, namely, ICT skills and language skills. There may not be the same depth of skill base in Waterford compared with some of the competing locations. In other areas we have Genzyme, on the pharmaceutical side, and we use established companies as the main reference sale. It is people who have come here and been successful in a region who become the reference sale. To be fair, Eistec, which replaced TalkTalk, is in a class of its own. It may be an Irish-owned company but it is a quality company and I am optimistic about its prospects. It will be a very good reference point in the future.

On foot of the Deputy's suggestion, we will examine the visits that do not succeed to determine if there is a pattern to those, but there are structural problems in terms of many of them. The Deputy knows them also. Many issues have arisen, some infrastructural and some to do with the knowledge infrastructure, and there are a number of issues enterprise policy alone cannot address. It was recognised in the south-east action plan that we must examine elements of the development of the region other than simply what we can do within enterprise policy.

I will take note of what the Deputy said. We will use that to see if we can analyse more closely the items we might be able to tweak in our promotion, but I reassure the Deputy of our continuing commitment. We recognise that this is an area where we have not been as successful as we would have liked, and we will continue to persist.

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