Enterprise Support Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22
============================================================

Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath

I hear the strong case that Deputy Fleming is making for County Laois and the road and rail infrastructure it has for connectivity. I have no issue in contacting the IDA again. I know the Deputy has raised this on numerous occasions previously, regarding a meeting with him about County Laois. I assure the Deputy that we will do all we can to seek as many opportunities as possible for Laois in the future. I have to be cautious in saying that I see new capital investments in bricks and mortar as a challenge right now in the environment that we work in. Notwithstanding that, the county has a huge amount to offer, and critically, it has significant assets in its population. We will work with the enterprise agencies, particularly IDA Ireland, to try to drive more visits and more job opportunities, and to ensure that the new land bank, which is the new capital acquisition in Portlaoise, gets a strong value proposition on the register of some exciting new company.

---

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/2026-09-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-22