Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Action Plan for Rural Development is part of the wider cross-governmental Action Plan for Jobs process.  The regional Action Plans for Jobs, published by my Department, will feed into the Action Plan for Rural Development. Through these plans, IDA Ireland aims to increase foreign direct investment in each region by 30% to 40%.  In the south-east region, which includes Wexford, this will be achieved through measures including the development of advance facilities, new marketing initiatives and a campaign to encourage Dublin-based multinational companies to establish satellite offices in the region.

The number of IDA Ireland-supported site visits to Wexford has increased to seven in 2016. While this increase is news in itself and evidence of increased interest in investing in Wexford, it is important to note that data on site visits are not necessarily an accurate measure of the level of FDI activity in a region or county. A better measure of FDI activity is IDA Ireland’s record 2016 results. IDA client companies created 18,627 jobs during the year across a range of sectors. Every region of Ireland posted net job gains, with FDI jobs in Wexford increasing from 2,486 in 2015 to 2,630 in 2016, an increase of almost 6%. These were IDA Ireland-supported jobs.

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