Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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41. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will provide details of the number of visits made by the Industrial Development Agency to County Limerick in 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5854/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I am informed by IDA Ireland that there were 22 IDA Ireland sponsored site visits by potential investors to County Limerick in 2014. These site visits were from new companies visiting the location for the first time and from senior executives of existing companies. While IDA Ireland always seeks to influence the client decisions on where to visit or where to locate, the final decision in all cases is made by the investor.

Limerick, along with Clare and North Tipperary, forms part of IDA’s Mid-West region. Within that region, IDA Ireland concentrates its efforts on the Limerick/Shannon gateway and the hub town of Ennis. IDA Ireland works closely with third level educational institutions in the region so that the skill-sets necessary to attract high value added employment to the county are being developed.

At the end of 2014, there were 48 IDA Ireland supported companies in Co. Limerick employing 7,906 people in full time and part time employment. IDA Ireland has strong relationships with all these companies and works closely with them to ensure their long term sustainability and to encourage their growth, development and continuing re-investment in their sites. The primary opportunity for regional locations is in respect of the existing client base and potential further investment opportunities from same. Approximately 70% of all FDI investments won by IDA Ireland are from the existing client base.

To date in 2015, two announcements were made for Limerick and Shannon. ViaGoGo announced a 100 person expansion of their operations in Limerick and in addition, Amax Shannon also announced a 100 person expansion of its Global and Logistics Operations.

There were a number of other IDA announcements for Limerick during 2014 including ViaGoGo (100 jobs), Optel Vision (140 jobs) Filtertek (35 jobs) and Johnson and Johnson (100 jobs).

As the Deputy is aware, the Action Plan for Jobs 2015 was launched recently. This is the fourth annual plan in a multi-year process, which started in 2012. When the First Action Plan for Jobs was launched, unemployment stood at 15.1%. Today it stands at 10.6% and we are on track to exceed our target of 100,000 additional jobs by 2016. We are now setting a goal to bring employment to 2.1 million by 2018 – 2 years ahead of our original target.

We are determined that every region will benefit from the recovery and we will be announcing over the coming weeks and months a series of actions to help drive the achievement of this goal.