Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 184: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his views on whether job creation in the Border Midland Western region has not kept pace with other regions here; the number of jobs created in the BMW region, on a county basis from 2000 to date in 2006; the number of redundancies in the region, by county for the same period; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40730/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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One of the key objectives of the enterprise development agencies is to encourage more balanced regional development and this is being pursued within the framework of the National Spatial Strategy. Some types of FDI project have a very strong preference for locating in a major urban centre, with its concentration of labour, services, transport links, and infrastructure. The lack of large urban centres in the BMW Region provides a challenge in this respect.

IDA Ireland has taken a number of proactive steps to promote investment and job creation in the BMW Region. These include:

Adopting a target of trying to locate 50% of all new Greenfield FDI first-time jobs into the BMW region. This is an ambitious target relative to the 25% share being won by the BMW region in the late 1990s. Over the 2000-2005 period an estimated 40% of all new Greenfield first time jobs have been located in the BMW region.

Upgrading the scale, resources and management responsibility of its regional offices, in order to enhance the Agency's ability to maximise the amount of FDI that locates in the BMW region.

Utilising the higher grant ceilings available in the BMW Region relative to the rest of the country in order to encourage investment projects to locate within the BMW region.

The following is a table that gives the number of jobs created in companies assisted by the Enterprise Agencies (Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority) in the period 2000 to 2005 in the BMW region.

The data in the latest Quarterly National Household Survey is published by the Central Statistics Office on a regional rather than a county basis and they show that the numbers in employment have increased by 27% from 407,500 to 515,900 in the Border Midland Western region in the period 2000 to 2006. This compares to an increase of 19% in the Southern and Eastern region and 21% in the State overall during the same period.

The following are two tables that give the number of redundancies in the BMW region from 2000 to 2006.