Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I applaud the Government's decision to reopen the Vatican Embassy. It was long past time. It should never have been closed in the first place. I am particularly pleased that there will be an emphasis and focus on human rights and overseas development. I look forward to wishing the new ambassador every success in his or her new role.

I wish to draw attention once again to IDA Ireland's regional policy on job creation. It has been established in response to a parliamentary question tabled by my colleague, Deputy Calleary, that my own county of Leitrim received just one IDA Ireland visit last year. This is in keeping with the trends over previous years. A similar trend is evident across the north west in general. By contrast, there were 373 IDA Ireland-sponsored visits to Dublin in the same period. I appreciate, as IDA Ireland said yesterday in a statement, that companies cannot be corralled into going to a particular location. It seems obvious to me that a certain type of company wants to locate in this country. I appreciate that in some instances, information technology companies want to be part of the cluster that has developed around the dockside area in Dublin as a result of the arrival of Google and Microsoft, etc. Surely there is a case to be made for bringing potential investors to parts of the country that already have an educated workforce. The irony is that every time a facility is located in Dublin, it is inevitable that it is staffed partly by people from my own county. In other words, a migration is going on. It does not apply to County Leitrim only - I would say it applies to the west and north west in general.

It is time for representatives of IDA Ireland to sit down with the Government and the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to try to figure out how they can persuade companies to visit these counties, rather than focusing on Dublin only. I know it has been said that they would go to Amsterdam or Barcelona instead, but so be it. They are not coming here to do us a favour - they are coming here because they have made hard-nosed business decisions on the basis of this country's corporation tax rate, its well-educated workforce and its lifestyle. I do not want to labour the point too much. I ask the Leader to provide for an hour to be set aside for the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to come to House, perhaps for a set of statements. I have made this request before. We should be given some indication of the Government's thinking on regional policy, with particular reference to the establishment of industries outside the main cluster areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway.