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

To take Deputy Naughten's point. As recently as in the past three weeks the IDA met with the company. We are keeping alert to any possible developments. I will not speculate on what is the strategy of Bank of America. It has made significant decisions and disposals already but we are ensuring that we seek to protect this.

Deputy Tóibín raised a much wider issue about regional strategy and how successful the IDA can be in terms of a regional spread. The flow of investments in which the IDA is involved has tended in recent years to focus on high skills and deeper labour pools and that makes it much harder to promote rural parts of the country as effectively. We have to focus also on developing indigenous enterprise. The is the reason the discussion on small business, indigenous enterprise, Enterprise Ireland and exporting is important.

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