During Leaders' Questions last week, the Taoiseach described to me improvements in foreign direct investment, FDI, job creation into the south-east region. I can find no reference to his data. What I can find shows national IDA Ireland jobs growth of 6% but lacklustre growth in the south-east region of just 1.6%. Despite having 9% of the population, the south east has just 5% of IDA Ireland jobs and a mere 4.5% of IDA Ireland-supported companies in the region. That amounts to over 9,500 missing jobs. This deficit has more than doubled in the past decade, indicating a regional payroll loss of over €650 million annually. I have asked the Taoiseach before and I am asking the Tánaiste now if the Government will consider setting up and funding a structure akin to the Western Development Commission for the south-east region. This would allow the region to develop significant applied economic and demographic research to support cohesive regional strategic planning and development. This strategy has proven itself in the north west. Surely it is time the south east, the most underperforming region in the country, is similarly supported.

I see the south east as a region that is very much in catch-up mode. If the Deputy wants to look at statistics, he should look at the labour force survey statistics from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, which show that jobs growth in Ireland last year was at its highest in the south east and south west, not in Dublin or the west, which is a good sign of the south-east region catching up. There has been significant IDA Ireland investment, such as by State Street in Kilkenny and the announcement by IDA Ireland firms of about 600 jobs in and around Waterford city in the past year or so. On the Enterprise Ireland side, there was a positive development in the Port of Waterford, where the new Royal A-ware Glanbia Kilkenny cheese plant will be built. It will never be the case that because 9% of the population lives in a particular area, it will have 9% of FDI. That is not how it works. All over the world, FDI tends to gravitate towards cities for obvious reasons. Dublin has 25% of the population but it does not have 25% of the agricultural or tourism jobs. Different regions have different strengths and in every country in the entire world FDI tends to gravitate towards cities, while other things gravitate towards other regions.