Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Government's belated acknowledgment that there is a two-tier recovery afoot, as this was continuously denied prior to the recent general election. Now that this problem has been acknowledged, we need to tackle it constructively. I will put a couple of facts on the record. In 2015, Dublin received 242 of the 565 IDA Ireland site visits, or 43% of the total. The Minister has quoted this statistic. However, this figure increased to over 50% when applied to the greater Dublin area, which comprises Dublin and the overspill of the city into surrounding counties of Kildare, Wicklow, Meath and Louth. It was clear that this activity was still concentrated in the Dublin region in 2015. This pattern continued in the first quarter of 2016, when almost 40% of all site visits involved locations in our capital city. It is important to note that counties Carlow, Cavan, Laois, Monaghan and Roscommon received no site visits.

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