Neale Richmond (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in welcoming the Minister to the House. I thank her for her thorough remarks. I am greatly enthused that the suggestion made by Senators from all sides of the House following the outcome of Brexit vote to have a series of debates with the relevant Ministers has been arranged by the Leader of the House, and we have had a debate with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Flanagan, and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, this week. That is extremely welcome as we dissect the impact of Brexit and try to plan for the next few years while Article 50 is being invoked.

I was greatly enthused by the Minister's address and I followed it on the monitor upstairs. I welcome many of her comments and her commitment to her Department. It is vital that Ireland takes an aggressive step to counter Brexit and makes sure everyone knows we are open for business, that we are up for trading with all nations, including Canada, and that we will continue along this path to make sure that Ireland makes the most of what is an absolute and unmitigated disaster. In that respect I fully agree with Senator Ó Ríordáin. Brexit presents Ireland with many challenges but it also presents us with a few small opportunities that we can definitely make the most of but we need to be proactive and work on them now.

Last week in the House I raised with the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Corcoran Kennedy, the case for bringing the European Medicines Agency from London to Ireland, preferably to Dublin. The Department of Health is chasing hard to achieve that objective. That is the attitude we need to take, and that is welcome.

The financial services sector is another area where there is a good opportunity for us to create additional enterprise and employment. This sector already accounts for 8% of our GDP, and 30% of the jobs in that sector, many of which are back office jobs, are located outside Dublin. County Kerry is a particular hub and I know the Minister of State, Deputy Breen, was there with Deputy Griffin last week. I appreciate that her Department, together with Deputy Flanagan's Department, are constantly putting the competitive case for Ireland as being a viable alternative for financial services companies and institutions seeking to relocate from London. Dublin is especially on the platform against rivals such as Luxembourg, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, but there are one or two other obstacles. I have already raised the issue of the delay in processing banking licences. It takes twice as long to get a banking licence to operate in Ireland as it does in Luxembourg, which takes a little less time than Paris. When companies want to move their jobs, that is one of the issues that comes up.

Another issue that arises is that of accommodation. I read quite a number of public and private reports from financial institutions, media groups such as Bloomberg and Politico and some of the big financial houses here and in London and they say there are two great obstacles in moving to Ireland but more specifically to Dublin. We want to see as many jobs moving across the island but when it comes to financial services, for front end jobs, Dublin is a key location. We already have the International Financial Services Centre. It is not the be all and end all but Dublin is our international comparative city. The issue that keeps coming up is the availability of accommodation, both residential and commercial. In terms of residential accommodation, I have full faith in the action plan for housing launched by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and I commend the Government on it. I hope what it proposes comes to pass. However, we are not paying enough attention to the provision of office space and I call on the Minister to examine that area.

A great report was published by Savills during the week which highlighted that 35 projects are under way in terms of building large-scale commercial developments in the city, but of those 35 developments, 60% are already let. When we have companies seeking to relocate, probably within two to two and half years time, they need to know that they will be able to move full-scale jobs to Dublin, the 900 jobs that Senator Reilly spoke of and the big companies like BNP Paribas and HSBC. That is what we want to attract. We need to get the message out that we are on top of that issue. I would like the Government to follow up the action plan for housing with an action plan for office space. It is not glamorous. It is something I said earlier and got mocked for mentioning because I am not very good at coming up with catchy titles. It would be very worthwhile.

We can continue to suggest that Brexit was a disaster, but the major challenge it poses presents some small opportunities that we will be required to take in order to offset the disaster that is Brexit and the obvious decline that we will see across the country. I wish the Minister well in her endeavours. I know she is travelling next week to sell Ireland on the international stage. As a nation we are great at that. People say that Irish pubs are the best small embassies in the world but this Government and the previous one during the past six years have done much to repair the image of Ireland, which was in the gutter in recent years. I commend the Minister on her work and I wish her the best. I hope she will be able to take on board the need to tackle the problem of commercial vacancies, particularly in Dublin. Let us use that to our advantage and bring as many financial services jobs to Dublin as possible.