Half of IDA visits last year were to Dublin

Rural Ireland has been left behind with new figures showing almost half of IDA visits for new business were in the capital last year.

County-by-county breakdowns for 2017 show 327 IDA visits out of 682 were in Dublin. Only 51 were in Cork, 62 in Galway, and 42 in Limerick. There was only one IDA visit in the whole year in Monaghan and just two in Cavan, Donegal, and Wicklow.

The figures were provided in a Dáil reply to Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins, who said: “Fine Gael’s claim that it is actively supporting well-paying jobs outside Dublin is nothing more than hot air and bluster. The reality is that its efforts are focused predominately on Dublin, to the detriment to the rest of the country.”