Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her question and for her good wishes. As Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation and as a Deputy from Cavan-Monaghan, this topic is very close to my heart. Regional development is a key priority of mine and I am focused on increasing investment in every county in Ireland. IDA Ireland shares this objective and I am pleased that its results for 2017 show that half of all jobs created last year were for locations outside Dublin. Every region in Ireland, including the Border region, posted net gains in jobs last year and there are now over 122,000 people employed across 649 firms in IDA Ireland client companies outside of Dublin. I look forward to working closely with the agency and across Government to grow those numbers further in 2018.

More generally, the north-east-north-west regional action plan for jobs is the key policy response for supporting employment growth in the Border region, including in Cavan and Monaghan. Sectors targeted as part of the plan include the region’s traditional strengths such as agrifood, manufacturing and engineering, and tourism, including active promotion of the Lakelands region. The core objective of the plan is to see a further 28,000 people at work in the region by 2020 and to reduce the unemployment rate to within one percentage point of the State average. The efforts by the stakeholders involved in the plan are paying off with 12,000 additional jobs in the Border region since the regional initiative was launched in November 2015. This represents good progress towards the target of 28,000 jobs for the region by 2020. I am also pleased that live register numbers for Counties Cavan and Monaghan have fallen by over 15% in the past 12 months. However, despite this progress, there are some regions that lag behind, particularly in terms of attracting foreign direct investment, FDI, and there is obviously more work to be done in the Border area. In 2017, there were 12 IDA Ireland client companies employing a total of 1,305 people in Cavan and Monaghan. It is a priority for me as Minister and IDA Ireland to grow these numbers in the coming years and the agency has committed to increasing investment in each region in Ireland, including in the Border region, by 30% to 40% by 2019.

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