Foreign Direct Investment
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
============================================================

Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo

I propose to take Questions Nos. 146 and 149 together.
FDI is a key element of our economic strategy, with investments by IDA Ireland client companies consistently generating high-skilled jobs nationwide. The Department works closely with IDA Ireland and other stakeholders to ensure a strong pipeline of FDI into Ireland.
In light of the rapidly evolving global landscape and given the challenging international economic and trading environment, the Government is implementing a whole-of-government response to the challenges Ireland is facing, as set out in the Action Plan for Competitiveness and Productivity. The action plan strengthens Ireland's attractiveness for FDI by improving the business environment through measures on innovation, skills, infrastructure and cost competitiveness, ensuring Ireland remains a stable, competitive and future-ready location for global investors.
Complementing this approach is IDA Ireland's own strategy, Adapt Intelligently: A Strategy for Sustainable Growth and Innovation 2025–29. This strategy identifies clear opportunities for Ireland to win investment in key growth areas such as digitalisation and artificial intelligence, semiconductors, health and sustainability. This strategy reaffirms IDA Ireland's focus on maximising opportunities for existing and new clients to invest in regional locations. Building on the excellent performance over the previous strategy, IDA Ireland is targeting 55% of investments in regional locations over the five years of the current strategy.
Last year the Department launched Silicon Island: Ireland's National Semiconductor Strategy, which aims to make Ireland a global leader in semiconductors. The strategy promotes national policies and investments to further stimulate chip design and manufacturing capabilities. Later this year, we will also launch a national life sciences strategy, reflecting the level of importance of this sector to both foreign and domestic companies and the opportunities for its further development.
Investment remains strong. A total of 323 investments were secured by IDA Ireland during 2025, representing a 38% increase on the previous year and the highest number of projects on record secured by the agency. Employment in IDA Ireland client companies increased by 1.5% year on year in 2025 to 312,400. The Government is fully aware of the competitiveness challenges this country faces as we continue to compete for FDI. We are taking the necessary steps to position Ireland for the future and we will continue to place cost, planning, energy and research and development at the centre of forward-looking policymaking.
Competitiveness is a matter for all of Europe. The Government announced last week our Presidency priorities, which are centred on three key areas: competitiveness, values and security. My colleague, the Minister, Deputy Burke, will assume the chair of the EU Competitiveness Council in July and we will have an opportunity then to progress really important files to align with European ambition in this regard.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16