James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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251. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will provide a list of vacant IDA Ireland sites in County Longford, which are available for potential inward investment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7146/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I am informed by IDA Ireland that there are two IDA Ireland sites available for inward investment in County Longford; a 0.97 hectare site in Lisnamuck Industrial Estate and a 1.98 hectare site in Aghafad.

IDA Ireland positions the Midlands Region, which is comprised of counties of Longford, Westmeath, Laois and Offaly, as having a strong cluster in Medical Technology and Life Sciences. The Midlands is home to key clients such as Abbott, Covidien and Genemedix. In addition, it is home to other client companies such as Epicor, Cameron, Teleflex, AXA, NPD Group and PPD. All of the aforementioned international brands are an attraction for potential clients to locate in the region and both sites will be promoted as part of this marketing.

There are 35 IDA Ireland client companies based in the Midlands Region, employing 4,032 across the Region. Of these, 6 are located in Co. Longford and employ 650 people.

The Succeed in Ireland initiative, which was launched by the Government as part of the 2012 Action Plan for Jobs is designed to lead to additional job creation over and above IDA Ireland targets. The scheme is delivered on behalf of IDA Ireland by Connect Ireland to support any potential investors identified to locate here. One such success under the Scheme has been Arc Consulting, now located in Longford.

IDA Ireland is currently finalising its new strategy to cover the 5-year period from 2015. I look forward in the coming weeks to launching this strategy, which will detail the goals and the broad direction IDA Ireland will take to accomplish those goals over the next five years.

Finally, the fourth annual in the Action Plan for Jobs process, the Action Plan for Jobs 2015, was launched on 29th January. 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.

My colleagues in Government and I 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.