Deputy Lynch referred to the EPA fines for failures in environmental protection and the impact on inward investment. The work of the EPA has been hugely helpful to Ireland's reputation in respect of having a clean environment and enforcing high environmental standards. The fact that, on occasion, companies are fined for breaches is in no way a disadvantage because it shows that we work to achieve high standards.
The Deputy also referred to upskilling and asked what skills were needed. Any economy needs a variety of skills across the entire range of activities. More and more activities, particularly those in manufacturing, require ever higher skills. What is needed is well summed up in the FÁS One Step Up programme, which involves taking every member of the labour force and moving them up one step. People with few or basic skills can move one stage higher and aspire to better jobs. Not everybody in this economy will be a scientist, an engineer or a professional in accounting or law. We will need more of those as well, so they are important, but it is also important that the semi-skilled become skilled and that technicians across a span of activities can step up their skill levels. That has actually happened significantly, year on year, and is the basis on which so many multinational companies continue to bring new activities to Ireland. They do so because they are confident in the ability of the Irish workforce continually to improve to higher skill levels.
We work very closely with FÁS in trying to identify skills and offer support in areas where particular skills are required. A good example of that is the commitment, with Government support, to establish a national institute for bioresearch and training, an €80 million investment to be situated on the UCD campus in Dublin. Separately, FÁS is developing a centre in Cork for training in the same area. There is a good understanding and connection between the two developments.
We work also with the expert group on future skills and have been involved in projecting skill needs in international services, financial services, medical technology, information technology, engineering and digital media. In summary, we need to be at the cutting edge to win the most high value investments. We must develop fourth level education and increase the number of people who do postgraduate work and doctorates, particularly in sciences and engineering. We also need business, science and engineering skills at graduate level and at technician or undergraduate level. We need to improve the business and communication skills of everybody involved in any type of business at every level. The education and training sectors, especially the institutes of technology, have been good at taking those steps. We work closely with them to help identify some of the needs, nationally and regionally.
I thank Deputy Callanan for his comments regarding Ballinasloe. We are in discussions with Teagasc regarding the possible purchase of a significant portion of lands in Athenry because we believe the location has a good potential for high value investments. These may be in the information technology area or biopharmaceuticals.
In the past year we have developed some lands in Oranmore and received advance planning permission from Galway County Council for a biopharmaceutical plant there. The planning permission was sought and received on the basis of a generic design, which offers the opportunity of going to leading biopharmaceutical companies around the world and indicating they could save a year in the timeframe of bringing drugs to market because the site is already developed and has planning permission. The company could then build the plant within the planning permission.
A similar project would be possible in Athenry. We are trying to achieve agreement soon with Teagasc on the land purchase and to have advance planning permission for a generic plant. This could be for information technology, as was the case in Grange Castle in Dublin in the past month or so, or in biopharmaceuticals. By doing this we can go to some of the leading companies in the world and indicate to them that their time to market can be shorter in Ireland than anywhere else because we have made a major investment in facilities.
Deputies Callanan and McHugh are interested in Tuam and Gort. We were glad to see Ulbrich moving into Gort in the past year. Deputy McHugh has asked what we are doing for the regions. We see the west as a region because Ireland, the west and Galway East must all compete internationally. The competition is not between a single constituency and another place in Ireland. The competition is between any location in Ireland and any location globally.
For the type of investment for which we are competing, we are looking at regions with a population of at least 400,000 or perhaps a million people. Companies can then believe they have a good chance of getting 100 industrial engineers, 200 chemists, 50 physicists or 200 accountants, for example, for the type of activity they might bring to Ireland. We must think in terms of a large population base and a strong urban centre which provides the type of business services that these companies need.
When a company such as USCI goes to Ballinasloe, it does not just consider the town of Ballinasloe, although it finds it attractive to locate there. It must take in all the expertise, developed over 20 or 30 years, in that region and Galway in particular. This company can locate in Ballinasloe because it can see connections that can be built with other companies such as Medtronic and Boston Scientific in Galway, the National University of Ireland, Galway and Irish companies such as Creganna and Mednova which operate there. It is the clustering effect of a whole industry and the industrial specialism and expertise in the region rather than an individual town that wins high value investment.
We must think of larger areas within our regional effort rather than single towns, constituencies or counties. Cork would be an exception as it has a population of 450,000. Other single counties otherwise tend to be too small to be able to compete on their own globally. We must achieve a position where regions think and act cohesively and use all the strengths of the area to attract international investment. This is why the national spatial strategy is so important. It must underpin the success of Tuam, Gort and Ballinasloe as much as Galway and Roscommon. Roscommon will play off the strengths of the midlands and the west. A region must be positioned to succeed in this context.
In the past year we have been pleased with the relative success of having 46 of 71 investments which came in either on greenfield or expansion basis land outside Dublin. It is important that investments land in Dublin, as that region is attractive from an international perspective. Some investments tend not to go beyond Dublin. Approximately 65% of the investments went outside Dublin compared with approximately 50% in the previous year. This is the result of a sustained effort in marketing locations throughout the country and the consistent investment in infrastructure, facilities, skills and developing the attraction of a series of regions through Ireland. We cannot succeed by promoting single towns against city regions elsewhere. We must promote regions against city regions elsewhere.
