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

Will the Minister comment on the 2020 regional jobs targets? She has specified a target of 135,000 new jobs outside the greater Dublin area. How does she intend to achieve the target given the onset of Brexit and the unpreparedness that seems to be everywhere? We did not have a Brexit-proofed budget and we do not have a fund to Brexit-proof our companies. Nor do we have a national hedging policy. Additional staff is being given to Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, but those numbers still have not come through. We are so much in the hands of others and the Government seems to be rudderless. That is what the representative groups are telling us. How will we protect what we have and how will we reach our targets in the meantime? In particular, how will we achieve the 135,000 new jobs outside Dublin? Many of the agencies have told us that the job losses that will initially follow Brexit will be those that are labour intensive, in the manufacturing sector and rural based. There will be no complement of jobs provided in those regions or sectors, although there may be a complement of jobs provided in the financial services and high tech sectors later.

See this speech in context