Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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87. To ask the Taoiseach the results of his recent visit to the west coast of the United States of America in terms of foreign direct investment and jobs for Ireland. [47662/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I had a three day visit to Seattle, Silicon Valley and San Francisco from Wednesday 1st to Friday 3rd November. The primary focus of the visit was on growing trade, investment and tourism opportunities between Ireland and the US, and on highlighting Ireland’s priorities in the context of Brexit and other international developments. In all of my engagements, I emphasised Ireland's unique value proposition and all of the advantages that make us an attractive and stable location for investment including our commitment to the European Union.

The programme included a series of meetings with existing and target client companies of the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Tourism Ireland. I visited the Headquarters of a number of companies with significant investments and operations in Ireland, including Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Google and Apple. Between them, these companies employ almost 18,000 people in Ireland. At each of these meetings, senior executives outlined their very positive experiences in Ireland, including the strong capabilities of their Irish-based workforces, and the positive outlook for their operations here.

There were a number of significant and positive announcements during the trip in terms of foreign direct investment and jobs for Ireland. I was particularly pleased that Facebook announced their intention to create hundreds of additional jobs in their Irish operations next year.

I attended the announcement by IDA client company Twilio that it has chosen Dublin as the location for its EMEA headquarters, with the establishment of 100 jobs. I also officially opened the new San Francisco office of Irish company, Linesight, which is projecting job increases of 200 worldwide in 2018, including approximately 90 jobs in Ireland.

I believe that my recent visit to the US West Coast was a valuable opportunity to engage with so many key decision-makers and promote Ireland as a location for investment.