Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The new way questions are formulated makes it very difficult for a Minister to give an answer and for a Deputy to ask a question. Everybody is rushing to get his or her words out and it is not conducive to proper debate.

The Minister said the question I asked is different from the written one. They are one and the same because, as the Minister said, FDI only produces a small proportion of the actual jobs in society. That is a given and an argument we have been making. New companies make up a smaller proportion. Most of the FDI jobs are come from existing companies which are expanding. If we do not get new companies into certain areas, they will not have the ability to create new jobs in the future.

Some 68 jobs were created in County Meath last year while approximately 550 were created in County Kildare, 240 in County Mayo and 200 odd in County Louth. County Kildare now has ten times the number of IDA jobs compared to County Meath. There is a yawning gap across the State between certain sections of society in regard to where the jobs are going.

The original objective in the Action Plan for Jobs was that 50% of jobs would be outside Cork and Dublin but we saw how this collapsed to 23% in 2012. Granted there was a small increase last year but this is not-----

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