Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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61. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the progress on procuring of sites for the development of new industrial estates in Limerick city; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22166/23]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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As set out in the Government's White Paper on Enterprise, IDA’s strategy, “Driving Recovery and Sustainable Growth 2021-2024” includes ambitious employment targets for 50,000 new jobs and 800 new investments over its 4-year lifecycle to 2024, with half of these new investments to be in regional locations.

As part of its Strategy, the IDA will acquire additional strategic sites within the Mid-West for future development to ensure a robust value proposition for clients. 76 investments are targeted for the Mid-West region in the period 2021 to 2024.

Over the past decade, employment growth in the Limerick City region has been significantly underpinned by major FDI investments in the life science and large-scale manufacturing sectors. Limerick city is now recognised as a global cluster location of choice for advanced manufacturing including both life science and semiconductor manufacturing multinationals such as Analog Devices, Johnson and Johnson Visioncare Ireland, Edwards Lifesciences Ireland, Cook Medical, Stryker Corporation and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and more recently Eli Lilly employing in excess of 5,000 in the city region. Furthermore, Digital Manufacturing Ireland, the new advanced manufacturing facility in Limerick, is an important additional component to Ireland’s value proposition and will build on these strengths to position Ireland at the frontier of Advanced Manufacturing.

It is evident that, to achieve National Planning Framework targets for population growth, Limerick’s future employment profile will rely heavily on its ability to capitalise on the success of the established cluster of Life Science and related manufacturing sectors and attract new greenfield manufacturing investment. Fundamental to achieving this will be the availability of sufficient zoned, serviceable, and accessible land in strategic locations. To this end, the IDA is currently competing for in an increasingly competitive international market for FDI and these are projects of scale requiring extensive land areas. Accordingly, while commercially sensitive, I can assure the Deputy that the IDA continues to work to future proof the portfolio of lands in the Mid West region, including Limerick, as set out in the IDA Strategy.