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

New investment in respect of the IDA probably represents perhaps 0.25% of employment in the whole country, so focusing on a tiny proportion does not address the whole issue of regional development, something to which we can return.

The Forfás annual employment survey reports on the numbers of jobs gained and lost in the enterprise development agencies' client companies. During 2013, there were 13,367 gross new jobs - 7,071 net new jobs - created in IDA client companies. This is the fourth consecutive year of jobs growth in IDA client companies.

Details of the number of jobs created in IDA client companies during 2013 on a county-by-county basis are set out in the tabular statement. Information is aggregated on a county basis but because information is provided by client companies on a confidential basis for statistical purposes only, it is not possible for reasons of client confidentiality to provide a breakdown in respect of individual companies to identify those that were new to Ireland in 2013.

During 2013, Ireland won 164 foreign direct investment projects, 78 of which were companies investing in Ireland for the first time, representing a rise of 18% on the previous year. First time investments were secured from corporations across the portfolio, including from Qualcomm, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Regeneron, Huawei, FireEye, Grifols, Alexion and Acorn Direct Marketing. There was also a strong presence of emerging fast growth companies in the investment wins in 2013, including Squarespace, 10gen, Culture Translate, AdRoll, Storage Craft, Qualtrics, Zendesk, Quantcast and Etsy.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

During 2013, of the 78 new name investments won only some of which were announced, by far the greatest number of investments were for Dublin with 55 investments. The spread around the rest of the country was eight for Cork, five for Limerick, two for Waterford and one each for Cavan, Louth Wexford, Galway, Kerry, Westmeath, Laois and Sligo. The 78 new name investments won by IDA Ireland in 2013 have potential to create approximately 3,500 jobs over a three to five year period. The actual job delivery from these projects will be measured in the Forfás annual employment surveys over that same period.

In order to complement IDA's efforts to attract more fast-growing emerging companies to Ireland and to focus on generating projects from small and medium sized enterprises, the Government announced the Succeed in Ireland initiative in the 2012 Action Plan for Jobs. Many of the projects delivered so far by the initiative will be located in regional towns which would not ordinarily be considered by large companies of the type usually attracted by IDA and the same is true of many of the projects currently in the pipeline. To date, 14 projects have been approved under the scheme with the potential to create 341 jobs.

See this speech in context