Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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548. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the total euro investment made by IDA companies in each county in the past five years; how many jobs were created in each county by IDA companies in each of the past five years; and how many IDA company jobs are in each county in the State. [37180/23]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Regional development remains a key priority for my Department, and for IDA Ireland and the other Enterprise Development Agencies. In that regard, the IDA is committed to the pursuit of balanced, compact regional development and is targeting at least half of all investments - that is 400 of 800 - from 2021 to 2024 to regional locations. Of the 242 investments won in 2022, more than half went to regional locations. Furthermore, a strong level of investment wins continued over the first half of 2023 with 139 investments won in the first six months of the year, 67 (48%) of which were approved for regional locations.

The strong growth in regional investment was supported by IDA Ireland’s property programme as a robust property and infrastructure ecosystem is a key differentiator in winning FDI projects.

33,000 new jobs were created in FDI companies in 2022, bringing the total number of people employed in the FDI sector in Ireland to over 300,000, which represents the highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) employment level ever. The results illustrate the continued substantial growth in FDI in 2022 despite a difficult global economic environment.

Growth in regions also continued with employment growth recorded in every region of the country. Strongest regional performance among IDA clients in 2022 was in the Mid-East region (net change +13.6%), followed by Dublin (+10.8%) and the Midlands (+9.7%).

Job losses, which were at historically low levels in recent years, increased in the latter half of 2022 as some tech companies sought to reduce costs and employee numbers in line with reduced revenue forecasts and weakening company valuations. These layoffs, proportionate to the size of the overall portfolio, resulted in less net employment growth in 2022, giving a net increase of some 25,000 jobs year-on-year.

The 2022 figures continued the pattern of sustained, robust growth in FDI investment and FDI-related employment that had been achieved over a continuous period of more than ten years. However, at the announcement of the mid-year results in July, IDA pointed to serious global challenges and uncertainties for the global, mobile FDI sector, including the Russian war in Ukraine, inflation, international monetary policies and a range of geopolitical developments.

As requested by the Deputy, the table below details the number of new IDA jobs created by county for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. IDA do not release the value of investments made by their clients as these are commercially sensitive.