David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This detailed report was published by the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation following a year-long series of consultations with enterprise agencies, education and training providers, local authorities and community and voluntary groups. Its recommendations are practical, credible, realistic and can be delivered on. I refer also to the report published by Waterford city and county councils which was cited by the Minister of State. Many of its recommendations are very similar. The problem is that these are reports and they need to be implemented. It is great to have all them, but the people of the south east want to see real action.

The Minister of State referred to IDA Ireland, the chief executive of which tells us all the time that the agency's job is to bring jobs to Ireland as a whole and that it cannot direct companies to lcoate in any particular region. There must be a regional plan. If companies are not coming to the south east, IDA Ireland has a responsibility to look at the reasons they are not coming and to address them. We cannot just wash our hands of the issue and give the excuse that they will not come because they make the choice as to where they will locate. That is not the case; very often companies gravitate to where the infrastructure is in place, where a university is located, a region that has strengths in certain areas such as the south east has in the areas of manufacturing, the life sciences and food production. These strengths can attract foreign direct investment to the south east. The problem is that there is there is no over-arching plan or strategy for the south east. In my view, the region is not getting enough from the enterprise agencies. It can be very frustrating to hear IDA Ireland state it cannot bring jobs directly to the region. That might be true to an extent, but it needs to look at why the companies are not coming to the south east and then address these reasons in a comprehensive way.