Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The news about Astellas is fantastic. I look out my kitchen window every morning at Astellas across Castlemaine Harbour. The fact that it will now also locate in Tralee is fantastic news for the county.

I will point out three things to the Minister. First, the previous advance facility has not worked to date. Nobody has worked in that site to date and no one is working there this morning. The Minister needs to revisit that because it is not good enough. A significant amount of Exchequer funding was put in to developing the facility and we do not have the levels of employment we should have in that facility to date. There needs to be serious interaction between IDA Ireland, the Minister and the company in question to get people working there.

Second, we need progress on the second promised advance facility for Kerry Technology Park. As I said, I have been getting the same answers for the past three years and I am not seeing any progress.

Third, there needs to be consideration for a new advance facility in the south of the county, particularly in the Killarney area. We need to widen the economic base. We need more opportunities for people and certainly the south of the county needs that.

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