2026-06-17

Ireland is at a crossroads. Dublin is bursting at the seams, housing is scarce, costs are out of control, infrastructure cannot cope and commuters spend hours of their lives on packed roads every day but two hours west of this Chamber, we have an asset of great national potential, Shannon and the wider region. Developing Shannon as Ireland's second economic engine is not just good for County Clare, it is essential policy for Ireland. With excellent road and rail connections and port access at Foynes, Shannon has the freight and logistics capacity that any foreign direct investment team would find compelling. Shannon Airport is the only airport outside Dublin that can handle long-haul flights. It is critical national infrastructure that needs to be used more. The Shannon Airport Business Park is the largest outside Dublin with hundreds of companies employing thousands of people across a range of businesses. It has 130 acres of land available for new development, doubling the park's current capacity and driving the economy of the entire region. What Shannon offers that Dublin cannot is space, which is vital. Physical space for companies, space in the housing market for workers who can afford homes within reach of their workplaces, and space in the planning system to move with ambition and speed. There are 9,000 students graduating every year from the University of Limerick, UL, and the Technological University of the Shannon, TUS. Shannon itself is home to the Shannon College of Hotel Management. Pharma, medtech, ICT, financial services, aviation, agrifood, and green energy sectors all have a natural home in the Shannon region. The Roche site in Clarecastle is a prime example of the region's industrial capacity. It is a flagship location that is perfectly placed to attract the next generation of global life sciences and clean-tech investment directly into County Clare. With Ireland's offshore wind potential off the Atlantic coast, Shannon is ideally placed to be the industrial hub for new energy-intensive and net-zero industries. The national planning framework commits to regional balance in principle. Successive Governments have promised balanced regional development but promising it and actively delivering it are two very different things. What steps is the Minister taking to back up those promises?

I thank Deputy Cooney for raising this very important Topical Issue on the mid-west region, Shannon Airport and County Clare. The mid-west region is uniquely positioned to drive balanced regional development, with assets including Shannon Airport, Foynes Port, excellent road and rail connectivity and a highly skilled workforce. There are strong links to leading education institutions. The region has all the fundamentals required to support sustained industrial growth and job creation. Government policy is fully aligned with unlocking this potential. Through the White Paper on Enterprise 2022-2030 and our regional development agenda, we are focused on ensuring every region, including the mid-west region, can realise its full economic and employment potential. My Department contributes to this agenda through the work of IDA lreland, Enterprise Ireland, the local enterprise offices, LEOs, and nine regional enterprise plans, REPs. The regional enterprise plans have proven effective in fostering regional collaboration, bringing together key stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities and to take action in areas such as cluster development, manufacturing and knowledge economy. Since 2017 my Department, through Enterprise Ireland, has made available over €150 million in regional enterprise development funding. Looking ahead, Enterprise 2035, as set out in the programme for Government, will build on this progress. It will support long-term enterprise growth and job creation, focusing on key enablers such as skills, infrastructure, digital connectivity, access to finance and sustainability. The LEOs play a vital role at grassroots level, supporting job creation in small businesses across the region, providing targeted grants for scaling and exporting firms, including support for specialist hires, and driving digital, green and lean transformation across sectors. Enterprise Ireland also supports over 700 client companies across the mid-west region, with employment growing in 2025 to almost 27,000. This growth is driven by strong performance in key sectors like medtech and healthcare, as referenced by Deputy Cooney. We are seeing this in major announcements, including Aerogen, lreland's largest indigenous medtech company, announcing this year the creation of 725 jobs between its two manufacturing sites in Shannon and Galway and Vitalograph's expansion in Clare and Limerick which will see it take on an extra 200 employees. In May 2025, Enterprise Ireland announced the high potential start-up, HPSU, class of 2024 in which €27.6 million was invested in Irish start-ups, supporting over 157 start-ups in 2024 through HPSU or pre-seed funding, of which six were in the mid-west. The region is already delivering strong results. There are 158 IDA client companies in the mid-west region employing 28,125 people, with employment among IDA clients increasing by 18% in recent years. Key sectors include technology, life sciences, international financial services and engineering. The strategic location, excellent connectivity through Shannon Airport, and a skilled workforce supported by the UL and TUS make the mid-west region an attractive environment for multinational corporations. Some of the major FDI companies have expanded their operations here, citing access to talent, quality infrastructure, and Government support through IDA Ireland as key factors. Adjoining Shannon International Airport, Shannon Free Zone remains a cornerstone of international investment, hosting one of the largest clusters of North American investment in the State, with continued growth in traded services and technology investment also accelerating. Looking ahead, continued investment, infrastructure and collaboration will ensure the Shannon region can fully capitalise on its key advantages.

I thank the Minister for his update and his commitment to Shannon and the wider mid-west region, which is very much appreciated. The overdevelopment of Dublin is not a Dublin problem, it is a national failure of planning and political will. Shannon and the wider region are not asking for charity. They are asking for the investment and commitment to do what they have always been able to do: contribute in a meaningful way to Ireland's economic future. Let us stop managing congestion in Dublin and start building prosperity in the west, which is important. Let us recognise the strategic importance of Shannon and the wider region by investing in our airport, in the roads and in the public transport network and in public services that will ensure its future growth. The Shannon Chamber, which I have worked with on raising this issue, the Shannon Airport Group, Clare County Council and the wider business community in the region are willing to support the Government in delivering on its commitment to balanced regional development. We need the political will to match.

I again thank Deputy Cooney. I had a great visit with him to County Clare and Shannon focusing on some of the key businesses that are there. We visited the Roche site, where there is huge potential, and we saw the works that are being carried out to remediate that site. We also visited Beckman Coulter, another exciting life sciences company, and we will see significant investment from other companies in the region, like Jaguar Land Rover, which is really working to invest significantly, and also PPG and Zimmer Biomet. There is huge opportunity. Working with Deputy Cooney and the key support he has provided to me and the Government, we hope we will have a very significant announcement during the summer by a leading Irish-born company in relation to Shannon. This will be a strong testament to the work of the Government in providing the key infrastructure but also in ensuring that we have a highly skilled workforce, and that we are getting key training opportunities into our workforce to meet the challenges of artificial intelligence, getting our skills observatory up and running, and ensuring that the high-performance in Enterprise Ireland that looks after our homegrown entities is excelling. We see right now that of the 196 high-performance graduates, half of them are grounded in AI. That is where we need to be as a country to take those key opportunities. I assure Deputy Cooney of my purpose and delivery and we will work very hard together to ensure we are delivering for the west and Shannon as a key economic hub and a driver for the mid-west and our country, as the Deputy has pointed out. I know it has been very successful at getting additional funding under the regional airports fund and it will be important to keep up that commitment from Government. I assure the Deputy of my support and I look forward to the announcement later in the summer. Last year, on a trade mission, as the first time ever for an Irish Minister, I visited the top Irish-born companies in Ireland over two days and sought what their issues and challenges were. Right now in this country, the top ten Irish-born companies employ 450,000 people globally, which is a very strong testament to Irish-born companies and the indigenous economy.