Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his warm remarks and his important question on Cork County Council. The ongoing replenishment of stock is essential to ensuring the portfolio remains fit-for-purpose and meets the evolving needs of the FDI, Enterprise Ireland and LEO client base. A ready supply of appropriately zoned land for development is required for IDA to fulfil its remit and continued success in attracting FDI to Ireland. IDA, therefore, maintains a focus on land banks to future-proof the ability of its property portfolio to support the project pipeline, most notably large-scale, capital-intensive projects which have significant regional and national economic impact.

IDA Ireland continually engages with key stakeholders and service providers, including Cork County Council, to ensure an understanding of IDA's land requirements and the availability of suitable lands for client investment across all activities and sectors as they arise. In this connection, the IDA has an extensive property footprint in many towns across County Cork, and there are currently 219 IDA client companies directly employing almost 50,000 employees in the city and county.

Given the importance of property availability to winning investments into regional locations, and owing to ongoing market challenges, IDA’s continued intervention in delivering and maintaining a portfolio of advanced property solutions across our regions to support investments remains paramount and is reflected in the new IDA strategy, which we launched yesterday. We are looking at having 23 new regional advance factory units, which will be very important, and three large-scale sites to attract investment. We are liaising strongly with Cork city and county councils to ensure we can have significant land banks to attract this investment.

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