Multinational firms ‘frustrated’ over failure to deliver basic infrastructure

Companies that come to Ireland are often frustrated by a failure of authorities to plan and deliver on the most basic of services from roads to water.

Speaking at the Ibec breakfast briefing on ‘Making Cork Work’, Gerry Collins, general manager of pharmaceutical company Janssen, said that in other parts of the world, when a company invests, the road network will have been built to accommodate the volume of workers that are heading out to the factory.

“When we look at where we are going to locate facilities around the world, we don’t have to worry about the road network in and out of the plant, before we go and build the plant there… They have already thought about the volume of people that will be going in and out of those facilities, so you don’t have to take on challenges like getting people in and out of the city.

“You don’t have problems like licensing volume for the facility or in terms of waste, because they have already thought of that before we get there. What we find in Ireland is there are a lot of promises made to get a facility into Ireland and then you spend many years to correct or lobby, or get attention to infrastructure deficits that exist in the location. That can’t continue.”

His concerns were echoed by Heineken Ireland chief executive Maggie Timoney, who said she had discovered glossy brochures for a Cork events centre that turned out to be three years old, but still there is no progress.

“I arrived back in Ireland after being gone 28 years, and I found on my desk beautiful glossy brochures for an events centre, and it was only three months later, when I was in conversation with Simon Coveney that I realised that those brochures had been developed two years prior. Now I am almost a year in my job which is three years in and there is still no events centre.

“We need to move with speed. Sometimes we need to put the toys back in the sandbox and do what is best for Cork,” she said.

Ms Timoney said there is a need for Irish people to make the tough decisions and then commit to seeing them through if the country is to create the infrastructure required for a thriving economy.

IBEC CEO Danny McCoy said that the key amenities that need to be developed are the airport, port and the Cork Limerick motorway.

“The new Port of Cork development is a priority and it is vital that Cork Airport extends its route network. Key corridors linking the city to its wider economic hinterland, such as the N28 Ringaskiddy bypass, the Dunkettle interchange and N20 Cork-Limerick motorway project, need to be developed as a matter of urgency if Cork’s potential is to be fully realised,” he said.