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

I hear exactly what the Deputy is saying but we do have a north-east, north-west action plan. We have a plan to make sure that jobs are created, whether they are IDA jobs, which I would like to see more of, or Enterprise Ireland jobs, LEO jobs or InterTradeIreland jobs. Just to put it on the record, there were actually 2,339 jobs created by InterTradeIreland in 2016. One of the key actions in that regional action plan is an M1 digital payments cluster. This is a key part of that action plan for jobs which proposes the creation of a digital payments hub in Drogheda. The Deputy knows that I co-hosted the meeting on that with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and that it was in her office with the TDs from Cavan and Monaghan.

We also had the establishment of the two regional skills fora, one for the north east and one for the north west, in the plan. We are also supporting a wide range of tourism developments across the regions, including a 22 km greenway project between County Monaghan and County Armagh. It is absolutely on my radar. I assure the Deputy that the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, reminds me of that every time I meet her as do our other TDs.

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