IDA accused of neglecting mid-west

THE Mayor of Limerick last night issued a ‘shape up or ship out’ warning to the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) after Limerick and the mid-west drew a blank with new industrial jobs during 2005.

Mayor Diarmuid Scully said the mid-west was conspicuously absent from the regional spread of 12,605 new jobs in IDA-supported companies.

“It is now more than 10 years since the IDA was responsible for bringing a major industry to Limerick and that was Johnson & Johnson at Plassey Technological Park,” he said.

Mr Scully said when responsibility for attracting foreign industry to the mid-west was transferred from Shannon Development to the IDA, the IDA failed to develop an organisational infrastructure in the mid-west to oversee its enlarged brief.

“There needs to be a recognition by the IDA that the mid-west is losing out. It is not as if we do not have a successful economy in the region,” Mr Scully said.

He said questions needed to be asked about the IDA and their role in the mid-west and why the region was not competing with other regions in the spread of new jobs in foreign industry. Limerick was very dependent on Dell, he said.

“If Dell was not as successful as it has been, we would have big problems. We are not getting the R&D jobs and the value added jobs and there is need for improvement by the IDA. There is now a pattern.”

He said he was not interested in getting embroiled in a turf war between the IDA and Shannon Development, over who should do what.

“But it is a matter of record that Shannon Development were successful at attracting foreign investment to the mid-west when they held that brief. It is not that the IDA cannot do it, but just they have not been doing it,” said Mr Scully.

Eoin Hoctor, president of the Shannon Chamber of Commerce, which has 150 member companies, said they were also concerned at the lack of jobs being created by the IDA.

“We would hope that the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, who are decentralising to Shannon, would have a bigger presence here and would be delivering jobs of high worth,” he said.

Mr Hoctor said Shannon Development had always done well on jobs creation and Shannon would be concerned if this track of job creation was not retained.