IDA is ignoring small towns: Sherlock
Sean Sherlock, the junior minister responsible for research and innovation, believes the IDA is focused too heavily on attracting foreign direct investment to large urban centres at the expense of everywhere else.
He says it is time to “shine a light” on IDA policy to see if changes are required to promote more balanced regional development.
“We need to shine a light on their activities and haul them in as a government to find out exactly what their clear policy objectives are in relation to the sites in the smaller towns throughout the country, which have been lying idle for years,” Mr Sherlock said.
He was responding to comments made by IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary following the announcement that telephone giant Talk Talk was shutting its Waterford call centre.
In an interview on RTÉ radio last week, Mr O’Leary acknowledged that Dublin, Cork and Galway had been the “main beneficiaries” of foreign direct investment, but defended the IDA and said clients ultimately make the final decision as to where to locate.
“[In the case of] many companies, we would have put packages of a couple of million on the table to incentivise them to some of the gateways and they’ve gone to non-granted areas,” Mr O’Leary said.
Mr Sherlock’s concern is that this policy of incentivising companies to locate in the “gateways” — nine major urban or built-up areas as outlined in the National Spatial Strategy — overlooks small towns and reduces their chances of investment.
IDA policy is based on the spatial strategy, which, as well as identifying the nine gateways, outlines a further nine medium-sized “hubs”, which are meant to support, and be supported by, the gateways and “link out to wider rural areas”.
One of these hubs is Mr Sherlock’s home town of Mallow, but he says he sees little evidence that either it or other small towns around the country are being prioritised by the IDA.
“I would have serious concern, if they were to move away from a policy of promoting sites in smaller towns, because that to me would signal a clear imbalance in terms of inward investment towards the larger urban conurbations which are very well served by the IDA as it is,” he said.
“As a new Government, perhaps we need to rein the IDA in and find out exactly what the extent of IDA policy is, and whether we need to influence that policy.”
Existing IDA policy is to “drive regional economic development” by ensuring that 50% of foreign direct investment projects over the 2010-2014 period will be located outside of Dublin and Cork.
