Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for the opportunity to bring this very important issue to the attention of the House. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, to give a commitment that a new IDA manager will be appointed for the north west and that the Letterkenny IDA office will remain open and will remain as a hub for attracting new industry to Donegal and the north west.

In recent weeks, the outgoing manager for the region has been promoted to a national role working with engineering companies, which means that the role is now vacant. In addition, the other member of staff in Letterkenny has also been appointed to a national role. This means that the Letterkenny office is not now working in the way it was before, namely, working to attract industry to Donegal and the north west. I urge the Minister of State to give a commitment that this situation will be rectified immediately and that we will continue to have, as we have always had in recent years, an office in Letterkenny working to ensure industry is attracted to the area.

I am particularly concerned that the IDA has made this move without first ensuring it had an exemption and permission from the Minister for Finance to replace that role and appoint a new north west manager before moving the person out of the role. That shows where the IDA's priorities currently lie, which is not with ensuring the north west and Donegal have people working on its behalf to ensure we get our fair share of investment. This, allied with the fact the IDA manager for the north-east region of Monaghan, Cavan and Louth has not been replaced either since retirement, indicates that the IDA is moving away from giving the support that is required to Border counties.

I very much hope the Minister of State will be able to give us an assurance that the situation will return to the way it was before, and that we will have a manager and an office. In these difficult times, foreign investment has been the key to driving Donegal, in particular Letterkenny, which has been a gateway area. I will give some examples of how this has benefited the town and the county. In September 2009, SITA announced an extra 80 jobs to bring its employment level up to 150. In December 2010, Zeus Medical Devices invested €10 million to create 75 new jobs over three years. Pramerica has been expanding constantly since 2000 to a point where it now has in excess of 800 employees. In July last year the UnitedHealth Group announced 200 new jobs to add to its total of 340.

As we all know, it is more difficult to attract jobs to the regions, which is why the regional manager structure and the regional office structure have been in place in recent years. During these most difficult of times for attracting investment, I hope the new Government will not announce it is moving away from a structure which has been important for County Donegal and the north west. I urge the Minister to give us a commitment on the appointment of a new north west regional manager for the IDA and on the retention of an office in Letterkenny.

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

The IDA is an autonomous agency set up by statute with a mandate to attract foreign direct investment in manufacturing and internationally traded service industries into Ireland and support new and existing foreign direct investment operations so as to maximise the related industrial employment, output, exports, economy expenditures including wages and corporation tax contributions. The management and location of IDA staff is a day-to-day operational matter for the agency and not one in which the Minister.

The IDA's head office is located in Dublin and the agency has a number of regional offices throughout the country as well as a network of marketing offices globally. The IDA decides where it needs to invest its resources to meet its strategic goals. The agency has informed the Minister that the north west was in the unique position of having two IDA offices, in Letterkenny and Sligo, respectively. These have now been merged into one north-west regional office based in Sligo. Under the national spatial strategy Letterkenny is one of nine gateway locations and will continue to be a key location for foreign direct investments. The north west contains 36 IDA client companies which employ almost 5,000 people. Letterkenny had two key client announcements in the past year, with a 200 job expansion of UnitedHealth Group to more than 400 employees and Zeus, which expanded its manufacturing facility to create 75 additional jobs. Examples of other client companies in the Letterkenny are Pramerica with 800 employees, SITA with 90 employees, Medisize with 140 employees and Abbot with 140 employees. The IDA's focus on these key clients and on the north west continues through one north-west regional office based in Sligo.

The IDA's strategy, Horizon 2020, sets out the agency's targets for direct job creation in the FDI sector to 2014 of 62,000 direct jobs in 640 investment projects over the period, resulting in an additional 105,000 jobs overall. In implementing this ambitious strategy the agency has also set specific regional goals of securing 50% of all investment in locations outside the two major cities and transforming the existing FDI base throughout the country to develop, retain and grow employment in client companies operating here.

In the context of achieving successful implementation of its strategy and challenging job creating targets, the IDA is maximising efficiency by increasing its focus on business generation and client facing activities which will ultimately benefit all regions. The transformation of the IDA involves the redeployment of its staff into client facing activities, an expanded footprint in the marketplace, an increased allocation of resources for existing client companies to retain and grow their presence and a more efficient support to front-line staff through reorganised shared services internally and externally with partner agencies. Since the launch of its strategy in March 2010, the IDA has carried out a business transformation process which examined every job in the organisation. This process identified operational changes that could be implemented to support achievement of Horizon 2020, areas of duplication which could be addressed by improved processes and areas where additional information technology could be used to bring about staff savings. The outcome of the process provided opportunities to free up staff resources for core business generation activities and needs additional staff to ensure the IDA meets its job targets. The process specifically identified potential changes in how the IDA drives business to regional locations, manages its property portfolio, the preparation and dissemination of information and the application of information technology.

The objective of the regional transformation is to enable a more focused and intensive emphasis on driving new investments into regional gateway locations that will benefit to the entire region by changing the role of staff located in those areas to increase contact with key infrastructure and service providers and developing regional value propositions that provide a compelling attraction for clients in identified sectors. They will have closer interaction with targeted investment and their needs, as well as meet identified needs in the business generation area.

While the Minister accepts that in the period 2008 to 2010, IDA staff numbers fell from 302 to 268 and are due to reach 254 by the end of 2011, the IDA has indicated that the overall staff complement in 2011 is sufficient to implement its current strategy in the period to 2014. The Minister has every confidence in the abilities of the IDA's board and senior management team to manage the available resources to enable the agency to continue to win FDI for this country, even in the face of the most difficult economic circumstances.