Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The encouraging stream of site visits by the IDA to the county, to which the Minister referred, was a total of one in 2012. There have been four visits this year. Unfortunately, under his leadership, there have been very few site visits and little new investment in the county. The Minister pointed out that companies there continue to expand but those companies are already there. We need to get our share new investment. The Government committed to 50% of that being outside the Dublin and Cork areas but we are not seeing it in our county.

The one key thing the Minister has done since coming to office is that the Letterkenny IDA office, which used to be the hub for the north west in terms of attracting new investments, has been moved from there, which has been detrimental. Will the Minister up the performance? We need to see a fair share of new investments coming to the county as well as depending on those 14 IDA companies to expand their job numbers.

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