Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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195. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the degree to which his Department continues to attract foreign direct investment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7324/22]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland continues to be an attractive location for foreign direct investment, and IDA Ireland reported strong FDI results in both 2020 and in 2021.

We recognise that the global competition for FDI is intensifying and that we will have to fight, harder than ever before for new investment projects. IDA Ireland's strategy for 2021-2024 informs our response to these challenges. The Strategy is built on the five pillars of Regions, Growth, Transformation, Sustainability and Impact, and it has an ambitious set of targets including 800 investments and 50,000 new jobs.

In 2021 IDA won 249 investments, 104 of which were new name investments. The number of people directly employed in MNCs in Ireland grew to 275,384, with over 29,000 new jobs being created by the sector in 2021. These figures indicate strong investor confidence, as these investment decisions were taken not only within the context of the OECD International Tax negotiations and agreement, but also during a difficult and volatile international environment as a result of both Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.

IDA Ireland continues to emphasise the core elements of Ireland’s value proposition for foreign direct investment. Our strengths – including our pro-enterprise policy environment, highly-educated English-speaking workforce and our membership of the European Union – remain attractive to international investors. Retaining and strengthening Ireland’s reputation as a destination of choice for foreign direct investment remains fundamentally important to our economic model.