Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. As he rightly pointed out, Deputy Charles Flanagan organised a delegation to my office recently to discuss this very issue. We went through in some detail the challenges and where we might seek opportunities in this area.

As the Deputy acknowledged in his question, the difficulty of getting IDA Ireland activity in the counties of Laois and Offaly has been a huge challenge for many years. This problem did not arise today or yesterday. The structure of employment in Laoighis-Offaly is that approximately 4,000 people are employed in indigenously owned companies while 800 people are employed in IDA foreign owned companies. We need to build on our enterprise base. There is no doubt that in recent times the manufacturing base of foreign owned companies, and it has been predominantly manufacturing within Laois-Offaly, has been under severe attrition throughout the country and there have been difficulties in the manufacturing sectors whether foreign or Irish owned.

Manufacturing is a key priority within enterprise policy and one of the things I have done since taking office is to establish a manufacturing development forum to set out a strategic vision for 2020, not just for foreign owned companies but also for indigenous owned companies which, in the case of Laoighis-Offaly, are a far greater proportion of the employment base. We must recognise that there are opportunities in manufacturing. It has been too easily allowed slide from the national focus of enterprise policy.

I am taking other steps to help drive increasing activity from our industrial base and employment opportunities across the country. These include the launch of the new potential exporters division in Enterprise Ireland to support more indigenous companies trade in foreign markets; Enterprise Ireland's lean business offer which enables manufacturing clients to improve productivity; the launch of the development capital scheme aimed at indigenously owned companies which are finding it difficult to grow to scale and expand into export markets; and the improvement in the research and development scheme. There is a good deal of activity going on seeking to build our broad indigenous engine of growth.

In terms of the challenge for IDA Ireland, when I go on IDA Ireland trade missions leading corporations are seeking pools of highly qualified talent in very substantial number. That is the difficulty we face. Increasingly, they are looking at areas where there are many companies in similar sectors already established. The Deputy will be aware that increasingly the profile of IDA Ireland wins we are seeking are in areas of information technology, research and development and in the pharmaceutical sector. They are activities that tend to be drawn to magnets where there is already a substantial presence in those clusters. That is what poses the challenge for regional policy. Effective regional policy will have to rely on indigenous development as well as multinationals.

The Deputy asked where the money goes from the €86 million. It is true that the strategy is designed to create 62,000 jobs in 640 investments.

See this speech in context