Responsibility for development of property solutions for enterprise promotion in the mid west lies with Shannon Development. Responsibility for grant assistance to companies locating in the region is an operational matter for the relevant development agencies. IDA Ireland is the national agency with statutory responsibility for the attraction of foreign direct investment, FDI, to Ireland and its regions, while Shannon Development is responsible for indigenous industry in the mid-west region. The IDA works closely with Shannon Development in the promotion and marketing of those tailored property solutions throughout the mid west, including the Askeaton business park.
The business park is a Shannon Development-owned land bank, comprising circa 227 acres. The site has been identified as an important site from a business and employment perspective for both the county and region in the planning and land use transportation study, the mid-west regional planning guidelines and the county development plan. The investment projects which IDA Ireland seeks to win will be in more advanced higher-value, sophisticated activities, both manufacturing and services, often related to research activities, requiring high-level skills, infrastructure and business services generating more high-value products, services and jobs. That reflects the changing nature of FDI, whose primary needs can be summarised as follows: a high-quality urban environment with a critical mass in population; world-class access infrastructure, for example road access to key cities and ports and international airports; telecommunications infrastructure with multiple carriers and competitive pricing with business support services; third level educational infrastructure, including universities and technical colleges that are located on or close to business and technology parks; a range of affordable, state-of-the-art property solutions with the necessary infrastructure to support their activities.
The Askeaton site is been actively marketed through IDA's network of overseas offices as a solution for utility-intensive projects. The development and servicing of the business park as a solution for such large-scale infrastructure-intensive projects is an ongoing project for Shannon Development, drawing on the experience of IDA in the development of similar sites in other locations, for example Oranmore, County Galway and Grangecastle, County Dublin. Ultimately, however, decisions regarding where to locate a project are taken by investors, based on the ability of the locations to support their business needs.