Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It may not sit very comfortably with us as a people but in reality the countries we compete with for inward investment use tools such as SARP. I support it on condition that it does deliver the promised employment dividend. Deputy Doherty’s amendment is quite modest because it is looking for timely information on how SARP is doing. It would save us all tabling a lot of parliamentary questions if an annual report was given to us because the measure of SARP is whether it delivers additional employment.

I support the principle of attracting the top executives into Ireland because inevitably jobs and investment will follow. Many countries competing very aggressively for inward investment are using attractive SARP-type schemes. I am not very comfortable with it but I recognise the potential benefits of a scheme like this. I support the amendment, which is only looking for information that we should not have to try to dig out with regular parliamentary questions.

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