Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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740. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of IDA Ireland visits that have taken place in each county in 2018 and to date in 2019; and the number of jobs that resulted from each visit in each county in tabular form. [36282/19]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As Minister, my objective is to create the best possible environment for enterprise, entrepreneurship, innovation and investment. Ireland continues to perform very strongly in terms of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and encouraging further investment from multinational companies is a major priority of mine.  There are now over 229,000 people employed in IDA Ireland client companies here, the highest in the State's history. 

Whilst site visits remain an important tool in helping showcase regional locations to investors, it is important to remember - as I have made clear before - that the final decision as to where to invest rests solely with the company concerned. It is also the case that site visit activity does not necessarily reflect investment potential or job creation, as a significant proportion of all new FDI comes from existing IDA clients already present in the country. My Department's Annual Employment Survey will provide a more complete picture of IDA jobs created by county for 2019 and these results will be available in January 2020. The Agency performed well in 2018 with 14,040 net new jobs created by IDA client companies and every region experiencing FDI-driven employment gains.

Creating more jobs in the regions remains a priority for both the IDA and my Department as we seek to build on the progress made over the last number of years. Since the IDA Ireland’s ‘Winning’ Strategy was launched in 2015, 455 Investments have been won for the regions with almost 27,000 net new jobs created in locations outside Dublin. We are focused on increasing those numbers further in the time ahead.

The following tables detail the number of IDA site visits per county from 2018 until the second quarter of 2019 and the number of IDA jobs by County in 2017 and 2018.

Table A: IDA Site Visits by County, 2018-Q2 2019 

Table B: IDA jobs by County 2017-2018