I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, to the House to explain Government policy in the spatial context. This request comes in response to ongoing announcements of job creation, which is taking place almost exclusively in Dublin. To emphasise the point, recent statistics indicate that IDA Ireland organised in excess of 250 visits to sites in the Dublin region in the past 12 months, whereas in Leitrim, Sligo and many other counties in the north west and elsewhere, there was no more than one IDA Ireland visit.

We all welcome job creation. I am very much aware that multinational companies tend to decide where they wish to locate. I have no wish to reflect adversely on the work of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland in bringing jobs in a global sense to the country. However, unquestionably the country is developing into a two-tier economy, which is a cause of great concern. It is time for the Government to decide what it wants to do about the rest of the country outside Dublin, with Cork, Limerick and to a lesser extent Galway getting the odd titbit from the table as these announcements are made. I do not single out Waterford because that is where the Leader comes from. The number of visits is small as is the number of jobs created there, with the exception of Eishtec, an indigenous company and not a multinational, which recently announced the creation of 250 jobs.

The Government is giving no priority to trying to encourage companies to locate in Sligo and the midlands, particularly high-tech companies. The nature of high-tech companies is that they do not need to locate in Dublin, but increasingly that is where they are going, to the detriment of the economy in the rest of the country.

I support Senator Paschal Mooney's request for the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, to come to the House to have a general discussion about the employment situation and in particular the lack of regional balance in recent job announcements. Having said that, we all welcome that figures published in recent days indicate that for the first time since 2009, the jobless figure has fallen below 400,000. We now have 1.867 million people at work, an increase of nearly 34,000 in the past year. The unemployment rate has dropped from 15.1% to 13.2%.

We have had more start-ups and fewer insolvencies in the past year. Start-ups are up by 17% and failures are down by 32%. Manufacturing has hit a two-year high and consumer sentiment has risen to a six-year high.

It is welcome that in the past 24 hours the Minister has announced €125 million under the first development capital fund which will focus on investing in small and medium-sized enterprises, but I share the concerns expressed by Senator Feargal Quinn in that the €125 million announced earlier this year or last year has not been accessed by or is difficult to access for companies. While €2 billion is being set aside in a suite of measures for investment and job creation in companies of all sizes in the coming years, we need to have a discussion on how successful companies are in accessing that money. We need to have a general discussion with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, on an Action Plan for Jobs, its updating and how we can accelerate the level of job creation. What Senator :Paschal Mooney said is quite accurate in that we are beginning to have a two-tier economy whereby many of the jobs are being created in Dublin, Cork and Galway city, while in towns such as my town of Ballinasloe, where we have lost 1,000 industrial jobs during the past decade, we are seeing very little to replace those jobs.