Published: Wednesday, 3rd March, 2010 5:00pm
Roll on the new motorway
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Someone should tell the IDA and Enterprise Ireland that Co. Cavan is in the North East region - in case they somehow are under the mistaken impression it is in Northern Ireland as indicated in the Dáil a few years back.
The revelation within the past week that Dundalk is to be the headquarters of two new inward investment projects (totalling 270 jobs) is good news for a town, which is under pressure from an exodus to Newry ten miles up the road but the failure of the IDA to land even one new industry for County Cavan, no matter how small, is disconcerting in the extreme.
It's now well over three decades (not to mention two recessions) since any multinational companies were attracted to set up in Cavan creating much needed jobs.
Ten years ago, it was announced with great fanfare that 830 new jobs were coming to Cavan's IDA Business Park in a £50m investment by Terradyne. But these jobs were deferred a year later and then went off the radar. Not only that but the planned decentralisation of the Department of the Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to Cavan, as announced in Budget 2003, also seems to have gone off the boil.
Cavan is not that remote - only 50 miles from the capital at the southern end and surely the track record of Abbotts and Pauwels would indicate that we have the committed workforce necessary to entice overseas industrial players into this county.
The news that the pharmaceutical giant Warner Chilcott is to establish in Dundalk was followed within days by the announcement by Tanaiste and Enterprise Minister, Mary Coughlan, that leading Australian health care company, Probiotec Ltd, is to site its European manufacturing headquarters in the Co. Louth town. As stated all good news for Dundalk but it is worrying that we were not able to secure an inward investment project such as Probiotec, which according to its CEO was swung by virtue of Ireland's "unrivalled reputation as a world leading centre for food ingredients excellence". This area is noted for its high quality food production and lends itself to the kind of industry operated by the Australian company concerned.
Positives for Dundalk are that it is on the M1 motorway and just 40 minutes away from air and seaport. The necessity of having speedy accessibility to both sea and airports is underscored by these latest announcements. The opening of the new M3 later this year cannot come quickly enough as far as Cavan is concerned. When it is opened there can be no excuses then about our peripherality or our distance time from the capital for not awarding us some form of inward investment. The new motorway has immense economic implications for Cavan and the Government and the NRA are to be applauded for pushing ahead with the project, one of the largest infrastructural developments to be undertaken in the State. Its potential should be realised within a very short timeframe.
