Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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16,843 new jobs were created in IDA client companies in 2023. IDA Ireland now has over 1,800 client companies within its portfolio employing 300,583, accounting for 11.3% of national employment.

IDA client companies reported an additional 248 investments in Ireland during 2023 with 83 of these being new name investments by companies investing in Ireland for the very first time and 67 being expansions by companies already established here. 132 of the 248 investments were in the regions and IDA clients now employ 163,471 people regionally, which represents 54% of client employment.

The Midlands Region saw the strongest level of growth, up 5.8%. There was growth in the Border Region (up 2.7%) and Midwest Region (up 2.6%) with the Southwest and Southeast regions up by 1.2% and 1.4% respectively. Elsewhere, the West Region was down by 1.8% whilst Dublin and the Mid East Region declined by 1.2% and 4.8% respectively.

Employment in FDI companies now accounts for some 11.3% of the workforce. Additionally, my Department estimates that for every 10 jobs generated by FDI directly, another eight are created in the wider economy. This translates to over 540,000 direct and indirect jobs supported by FDI at the end of 2023.

The 2023 results reinforce the scale of the contribution of FDI to Ireland and the role that inward investment continues to play in providing jobs and opportunity for people right across the country. While these results are reassuring in the context of an increasingly challenging and competitive global environment for enterprise and for FDI, Government recognises that Ireland must stay agile and ambitious to win investment as we pursue implementation of the policy mix set out in the White Paper on Enterprise.

In 2023, employment in Enterprise Ireland supported companies increased to a record 225,495, the highest ever recorded. A total of 15,530 new jobs were created in 2023, of these 68% of new jobs created were regionally based. Eight out of nine regions recorded net jobs growth, with the West region, the North-East region and the North-West region performing particularly strongly.

Through the work of my Department and colleagues in Enterprise Ireland, figures show that Enterprise Ireland supported companies recording jobs growth for the third year in a row against a particularly challenging year for exporting Irish businesses with rising input costs, high interest rates and international instability among the challenging issues that impacted business performance. Government continues to be agile in our support of business facing these challenges and we continue to seek to create high-quality employment across every region in Ireland. To these ends, in addition to direct financial support, we are working with our enterprise agencies to ensure an increased focus on innovation, digitalisation and sustainability so that companies based in Ireland remain competitive in global markets.

Finally, the number of new IDA, and Enterprise Ireland jobs created in each county for the past ten years, is set out in the table circulated with this Reply.