Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh Ghníomhaigh. I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for selecting this matter and the Minister, Deputy Bruton, for being here in person. I know he has a busy schedule today as always.

I am very concerned with figures I obtained recently in respect of the number of people working in IDA-supported companies in the Cork and Kerry region. I am concerned about the breakdown of those figures and the number of such companies in the two counties. It is the largest regional division of the IDA, as I understand, with a population of 666,000, of whom 519,000 are in County Cork and 145,000 in County Kerry. While the population of County Cork is roughly 3.5 times that of County Kerry, the figures for employment in IDA-supported companies are unfortunately very different.

There are over 15 times the number of people employed in IDA companies in Cork than there are in Kerry even though the population in Cork is only three and a half times that of Kerry. There are 12 times more IDA companies in Cork than there are in Kerry. There are 146 IDA-supported companies in Cork employing 28,545 people while there are 23 IDA-supported companies employing 1,874 people in Kerry. Kerry could be doing much better than this. I do not mean to in any way overstate the importance of FDI in our economy but it certainly plays an important role and we cannot ignore it.

To date, the Cork-Kerry collective arrangement has not been working for Kerry. It is not delivering to the level it should be. We need to bring more IDA-supported companies to Kerry. I acknowledge that there has been great progress in the past number of years in terms of the expansion of IDA-supported companies in Kerry. There are over 300 net new jobs in those companies. That compares to major losses in 2008 to 2010 so we are going in the right direction but we could be doing more. I see that Waterford has its own regional office and I think something like that would be very suitable for Kerry.

We have a different arrangement when it comes to investment aid, which is something I have worked on since I entered this House. I thank the Minister for his efforts in putting Kerry on the investment aid map since 1 July 2014. We have different strengths and opportunities to push in the Kerry region that a Kerry office could bring to the fore to bring more industry to the country.

Hopefully, we have put in place measures to improve the fundamentals for Kerry, for example, the N22 Cork-Kerry road. Getting that on the capital plan has been a major step forward and has been one of the greatest socioeconomic developments for the county in many years. We need an office to push Kerry individually. If we had a stand-alone office in Kerry, would we have seen greater progress on the Shannon LNG project in recent years? Would companies like Amann Industries in Kerry, which left in 2010, have stayed a bit longer? Could we have done something differently? The feeling on the ground in Kerry is that we are the poor relation of Cork. When we look at those figures - 12 times the number of IDA-supported companies and 15 times the number of people employed - it certainly gives that notion credence.

I would be interested in hearing the Minister's views. I acknowledge the great progress that has been made in the past number of years in reducing the live register figures in Kerry. When I was first elected, we were heading for 18,000. We are now just over 11,000. At 34.94%, Kerry has seen the highest reduction in live register figures in the country since the launch of the action plan for jobs in February 2012. This is a major achievement but we need to keep it going and increased FDI would help us do that and build for the future.

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