Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 October 2004
5 Mr. Howlin asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his strategy for supporting employment and creating jobs in unemployment blackspots within the southern and eastern regions; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23791/04]
Amharc ar fhreagraBalanced regional development is a significant focus of Government policy. Its importance has been confirmed in the current national development plan and the national spatial strategy. Our objective is to develop the strategy to enable as many areas as possible to share the benefits of regional development. The State development agencies are working to ensure the key centres under the NSS, such as Wexford, Waterford and others in the south and east region, play a cohesive contributory role in promoting strong regional development.
The enterprise development agencies have had a good deal of success in attracting higher value enterprises to the region, in line with our policy of moving enterprise in Ireland to the higher value output of products and services. These successes are reflected in the southern and eastern region, as recent announcements such as Guidant's expansion in Clonmel, Altera in Cork and ALZA's recent opening in Cashel attest. We are also accelerating delivery of economic infrastructure for businesses, including broadband, roads etc.
While IDA Ireland is actively marketing the region as a prime location for new investment, it is also working with other agencies to spread the regional benefits of foreign direct investment. For example, last June Enterprise Ireland held a seminar in Cork to inform potential supply partners of opportunities relating to the construction and operation of the ALTANA Pharma plant in Cork, in effect, maximising the potential for indigenous firms across the region to capture new business from foreign investments.
In addition to attracting foreign investment, a focus of our strategy is to support the development of new vibrant Irish enterprises built on successfully harnessing the creativity and innovation of home grown entrepreneurs. State support for entrepreneurship, through Enterprise Ireland, is clearly centred on the creation of new entrepreneur-led business entities with a solid base in innovation, intellectual capital and the capability to become internationally competitive.
In the past five years in the southern and eastern region, over 210 high potential start-up companies have been supported by Enterprise Ireland with a further 49 targeted for the region for 2004. Enterprise Ireland's competitiveness fund designed to help companies overcome distinctive competitiveness problems, has approved €5.8 million for companies in the region. This is almost 50% of fund approvals to date.
Some areas within the region have not fared as well as others in enterprise development. To help address this, the Wexford County Enterprise Board operates a technology transfer programme under the EU EnAct initiative to help small businesses bring more technology into their operations. The board also provided over €400,000 in grants to support Wexford micro enterprises last year. Over the past four years, Enterprise Ireland, through the community enterprise centre programme helped 32 projects establish and expand enterprises with community participation. Many of these are in areas of deprivation and high unemployment or in areas where there was a low level of enterprise culture. The agency is now developing the programme further by building networks of enterprise centre managers to share knowledge and instigate other co-operation activities.
Many regional locations can suffer badly from the loss of one industry and replacement of the inevitable losses is a tough challenge. I cannot and will not be complacent about job losses. Every effort is made to find replacement enterprise and provide appropriate supports to reorientate those who have been affected by redundancy. By encouraging infrastructural development and taking advantage of improvements in infrastructure to expand the number of alternative locations Ireland can offer investors, opportunities for overall investment levels will be enhanced and a more even geographic distribution of enterprise investment will be achieved. I am satisfied that the continuing and intensive efforts of the agencies, the modification of enterprise policies to reflect the reality of the global marketplace and the ongoing commitment of the Government to regional development are positive supports to help stimulate further employment opportunities in the region.
I am afraid I am no wiser after the long answer the Minister put on the record of the House. The issue is a straightforward one, that is, within the so-called developed region, the southern and eastern region, there are economic blackspots whose manufacturing base in particular is well below the average for the rest of the region. Areas such as County Wexford which the Minister instanced would qualify for membership of the BMW region if it was contiguous with that area rather than being surrounded by more affluent counties like Deputy Hogan's which did not allow that to happen.
I have received no evidence of a clear strategy from the Minister to deal with blackspots within the so-called developed region. There are specific inducements to bring industry into the BMW region, which I do not in any way want to undercut, but there are other areas that deserve a similar specific approach from the Government in regard to job creation within the so-called developed region. I am sure the same would apply to areas of Cork city.
Will the Minister develop a sub-focus within the so-called developed region that will address the haemorrhaging of jobs? In the past ten days in Wexford, Spring and Precision Engineering and the P&O Company are just two employers to pull out and there has been no replacements in recent years of the county's already impoverished manufacturing base. There needs to be a specific target above the task force that was established and the enterprise groups that are common to every county to address in a focused way the delivery of jobs to areas that need them. I do not expect the Minister to have had an opportunity to do much to date, but will he undertake to the House that the development of a dovetailed strategy to deal with blackspots within the so-called developed region will be a priority for him?
Those areas will clearly be areas of priority for me. However, I would not be dismissive of the initiatives to date or the fundamental response to the question.
No jobs are coming, that is the problem.
I have been through this in my area, albeit in the 1980s when some major manufacturing companies closed. The one thing we learned at that time is that there was not a big bang response, that one did have to change strategy, to go back and reconfigure. I see skill-sets as being the critical area. It is not sexy to say this and it does not give consolation to those who have lost jobs, but clearly training and education are the priority in terms of reorientating and repositioning an area to secure and attract industry.
Clearly there are certain infrastructural changes one can make to try to improve the overall infrastructure of a community. To be fair to Enterprise Ireland in terms of the enterprise centres, one can adopt a strategy to try to put expertise on the ground in the unemployment blackspot areas to act as a catalyst and a support to entrepreneurs who want to start their own businesses. That is happening and if there is a degree to which we can improve, as far as I am concerned my door is open to those with ideas.
We should not lose sight of the overarching strategy. The spatial strategy offers us an opportunity, especially in the southern and eastern regions, to become a new magnet. Maybe a change of mind is necessary in the regions because, unfortunately, within regions centres see each other as rivals as opposed to seeing themselves as one region. I have seen this in different areas in which I have worked. As we know, the magnet is to the east, to Dublin and beyond, which is where the focus of economic activity is located. The only way we can reverse that trend is by the major centres working together. Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny have been identified in the spatial strategy as a triangle that should see itself as an identifiable region and work in a combined way to attract industry.
We have no spatial strategy. It is being ignored.
I welcome what the Minister has said but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have done the analysis. For example, it was said that we provided a road system in Wexford that is among the best in the country. We also provided a site with an adequate water supply but it has not worked. We need to do an analysis of why the manufacturing base is so low when traditionally we have had a very high manufacturing base almost from the 19th century.
There does not yet appear to be a specific subset of policies that sees blackspots within the developed region and the pressure appears to be on developing the BMW region which clearly must have a priority in terms of the totality of the southern and eastern region. I instance Wexford because it is the area I know best but there are other blackspots within that developed region that need more than the general approach we have had to date. When unemployment rates are at such a good low base as we now have, we can afford to go that extra focused mile to ensure that everybody benefits equally. Otherwise we will have regions that are simply service regions that provide dormitory facilities for workers to travel to contiguous urban centres. That is something we should try to avoid.
I do not have a difficulty with the broad position the Deputy has adopted, other than to say that it is interesting, even in the context of the BMW region, notwithstanding the additional grants that are at the disposal of the State to award, that the bulk of foreign direct investment has still headed to the east in any event.
To some section of the east.
The grant issue is no longer the pre-eminent issue in terms of where a particular industry will locate. As state aid rules are revised in the European context, I suggest we need to look in other directions to create the conditions to secure an investment in a particular location of the type the Deputy is suggesting. The Deputy is clearly aware that the traditional sectors are under pressure and moving to low-cost bases. In a globalised economy that is inevitable. They key for us is to try to move up the value chain to see whether we can create employment of a different kind in these locations.
