Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 201: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the countries to which jobs have relocated from here in the past ten years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25768/07]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 203: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his proposals to address the issue of rising costs with resulting lack of competitiveness affecting employment here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25770/07]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 205: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the extent to which he has identified the rising costs which tend to deter foreign inward investment; his proposals by way of action to address these issues; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25772/07]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 201, 203 and 205 together.

It is not possible to provide a list of countries to which companies have relocated from Ireland. While the Department's enterprise development agencies collect, on an annual basis, employment data in their client firms, no data is gathered on a similar basis of the new location of companies that relocate their Irish operations. Companies allocate their resources and plant location strategies for many practical and business reasons such as to be closer to key customers, to have access to specialist skills, to address market needs or customer relationship requirements. Firms do not necessarily relocate because of cost issues alone.

In key aspects Ireland remains a strong competitive and efficient location for many sectors. Our competitiveness is robust in the new enterprise sectors on which we are building a growing international reputation. This is borne out by the successful pipeline of R&D projects that IDA Ireland is winning in the face of exceptional competition from other developed countries. It is interesting to note that analysis undertaken by Forfás shows that Irish cities are more cost competitive for key positions in biopharmaceutical and medical device sectors than similar cities in developed economies. These are key areas of the economy and among ones we are targeting to drive future economic growth. They are closely linked with the significant investment in R&D and related infrastructure that this Government is undertaking to strengthen our international competitiveness in high technology and high reward sectors.

In October alone three major, world class companies selected Irish universities with whom to undertake collaborative R&D. These projects are in areas that are critical to the future product development of these firms. Two relate to research in medical technologies at Galway and Dublin involving GlaxoSmithKline and Smith & Nephew and the other was a decision of Nortel Networks to significantly invest in R&D and innovation at its Galway centre. The decision to select Ireland for strategic investment in corporate R&D clearly demonstrates our growing reputation, competitiveness and success for the foreign direct investment we are seeking to attract to Ireland.

This Government has always been focussed on addressing competitiveness issues as they emerge. There will be no diminution of our commitment to making the economy one of the most important locations in which to build businesses in high technology and internationally traded services. The Government has introduced a number of non-inflationary budgets in recent years, has set up the Anti Inflation Group under the terms of Towards 2016 and responds to the regular advice on the competitiveness agenda provided by important bodies such as the National Competitiveness Council.

These policies have promoted employment growth because they recognise that economies are dynamic and always evolving. The ability of an economy to create new and better jobs to replace those that are lost is the real test of competitiveness. Last year total employment in the country exceeded 2 million for the first time and net job creation in agencies such as IDA and Enterprise Ireland, was the highest since 2000. The last Quarterly National Household Survey on the labour market showed that the pace of employment growth actually accelerated slightly and employment over the year was up by 3.8%. This means there are nearly 2.1 million employed in Ireland — an increase of 78,000 on the same quarter in 2006.

In addition to broad, pro enterprise policies, my Department has given a strong mandate to its development agencies to deliver a wide range of measures to help strengthen their clients capacity to undertake more and better innovation, research, technology acquisition and skills development. These are the competitive characteristics on which Ireland will grow. They will be consistently improved and developed to match the changing needs of business.