Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)
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120. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his plans for the land bank in Haynestown, Dundalk, County Louth owned by the Industrial Development Agency ; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12524/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I have been informed by IDA Ireland that the Agency's lands in Mullagharlin/Haynestown currently have valid planning permission in place for an Advance Biopharmaceutical and Knowledge Industry Campus which will support biopharmaceutical administration, research and support activities. The site has been masterplanned to include two facilities which will consist of a medium to large scale bio pharma manufacturing facility and small to medium scale bio pharma manufacturing facility. The planning permission is valid until 2018.

The promotion of this site forms part of IDA Ireland's global marketing strategy to potential IDA/FDI clients across a number of industry sectors with options for site availability with planning permission or as a greenfield site.

IDA Ireland recently published its new strategy for the 5 year period 2015 to 2019. In that Strategy the Agency set itself a target of winning 900 investments over the 5 year period and of increasing the level of investments won into in each region by between 30% and 40% during the lifetime of the Strategy.

As a Government, we are determined to ensure that every region in the country will benefit from recovery and last month we announced details of the Action Plan for Jobs-Regional initiative which will seek to maximise the strengths and assets of each region to support enterprise growth and job creation. The objective is that six Regional Action Plans will be launched by July, with two remaining Strategies in development at that stage.

Additionally the Government will provide up to €250 million over five years in additional capital funding to support regional enterprise development. This includes the roll out of a five year, €150 million property investment programme by IDA Ireland to attract foreign direct investment into the regions. This programme will build on the recent investment by the Agency in a number of advance manufacturing facilities in regional locations. A further sum of up to €100 million will be available to Enterprise Ireland to support enterprises in the regions to start-up, grow and export, thereby creating more jobs in regional locations.