Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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10. To ask the Taoiseach to report on his hosting of the competitiveness summit on 1 September 2024. [36689/24]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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11. To ask the Taoiseach to report on his hosting of the competitiveness summit on 1 September 2024. [40038/24]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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12. To ask the Taoiseach to report on his hosting of the competitiveness summit on 1 September 2024. [40041/24]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 12, inclusive, together.

Last month, I chaired the Government’s inaugural competitiveness summit. In attendance were relevant Ministers, together with the chair of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, a senior representative of the OECD, and the chief executives of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland among others from those organisations. The summit saw discussion on the challenges facing our own country in maintaining our competitiveness in a changing international and European context, along with the importance of managing the factors under our domestic control, and the need to address infrastructural deficits, cost pressures and to ensure a pro-enterprise economic environment. The summit focused on three core areas where Ireland needs to respond to secure future competitiveness. First, adapting to European and global disruption, including a changing subsidy landscape, developments in global trade and disruptive technologies. Second, enhancing Ireland’s infrastructure offering, upgrading our energy, water and other infrastructure while minimising cost burdens on firms and households. Third, supporting Irish enterprises to scale and prosper, encouraging entrepreneurship and new technologies, while better controlling the cost base facing businesses.

The summit was an opportunity to consider these challenges in detail in advance of the recent budget. Consistent with discussions at the summit, in budget 2025 the Government took several significant decisions to address our competitiveness challenge. These include the allocation of a record €14.9 billion in voted capital expenditure to address infrastructure demands; the allocation of €3 billion from the proceeds of recent share sales towards boosting public investment in housing, energy and water infrastructure; agreement on a funding package of €1.485 billion over six years from the National Training Fund to, among other things, increase investment in employment-focused skills and training to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of our businesses; provision of additional resources to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to focus on identifying and removing barriers to competition in domestic markets; and putting in place a package of measures to support our small and medium businesses to incentivise their growth, including an increase in the threshold for the research and development tax credit, reforms and extension to the startup relief for entrepreneurs and the startup capital Incentive schemes, increases to VAT thresholds, and introducing the power up grant for the retail and hospitality sectors, which will provide those businesses with €4,000 before Christmas towards their electricity costs.

Alongside these decisions in the budget, in support of competitiveness, the Government has also in recent weeks committed to a new initiative to minimise the regulatory burden on our small and medium businesses, including rigorously applying a new SME test across Departments, and by consulting with businesses to identify additional areas where the regulatory burden could be reduced. We progressed the landmark Planning and Development Bill 2023, which passed the Oireachtas last week, bringing about a once in a generation reform to update and streamline our planning system, providing clarity, consistency and certainty. We reconfirmed that, conscious of the cost pressures facing business, the timing and phasing of labour market reforms would continue to be kept under review, taking account of up-to-date impact analysis, to ensure that cost burden on SMEs in most-affected sectors is sustainable.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I think it would be fair to describe the Cherrywood development as a flagship development for Ireland presenting itself as a place where there is quality of life, there is the housing we need and where you have all the amenities, facilities, infrastructure and so on necessary for a place where people can live and work. It is the biggest residential development in the country. I do not like the word "competition" because I do not think running an economy is like running a race against somebody else or playing a football match. It is about having a quality of life, infrastructure, housing, services and so on. At one point Cherrywood was in public hands when we had to nationalise it through NAMA. We flogged it back off to international companies like Hines, which have developed it. However, key to the Cherrywood development was the promise - in the strategic development zone planning - that there would be a town centre with medical facilities, shops, supermarkets and all the amenities you would expect. It was going to be a ten-minute town. You would not have to drive anywhere because everything would be there. It now turns out that Hines the developer, which has made massive profits from flogging off the houses and apartments there, and which are astronomical in price, has now decided it is not building the town centre. It is just not building it. The whole development hinged on this town centre, and now Hines has decided it is just not profitable and they are not going to bother building it. It is trying to put the Government and the people over a barrel, I presume to try to get more public money. It already got lots of LIHAF funding to build the parks and infrastructure. In short, this cannot be allowed. That town centre has to happen, so I am asking for intervention from the Government to make sure it does.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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Did the question of housing come up at the competitiveness summit? It is clearly a major issue in workers being able to have affordable housing somewhere in some sort of achievable commutable distance from their work. It seems that a key issue continues to be the fact that councils are taking public land and selling it off for very low prices to private developers as opposed to having a State construction company able to build social and affordable homes on public land. Last night South Dublin County Council voted, with People Before Profit opposing, to effectively give public land away to a private developer for €100. There will be 88 homes on this site, 18 of which will be social homes. They will say they need to do it because we are reliant on the private developers. Does not all of this prove we need a State construction company, and a rule to say that where we have public land, we need to put public homes on it? That is social housing and genuinely affordable housing, as opposed to this reliance on the market that has got us into the crisis we are in.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I want to deal with the issue of pharma in Dundalk. Before that I bring up an issue, I brought up previously about Dundalk Grammar School. It set up a GAA team in the past while, which was supported by parents, students and Louth GAA. It has played in the Lennon Cup but has been given an order by the board to desist. It has caused huge consternation. I have never seen anything cause as much consternation in the area. We need to have some element of commentary. We want the board to look at these students who did their best in carrying out their protests last Friday and will again this Thursday in the perfect way anyone would want. Louth GAA and everyone else is providing all the necessary supports. It is something we should look at.

I turn to the question on pharma. We have seen Wasdell close, but we have also seen what we hope is good news relating to PCI Pharma Services. As soon as that information can be given to the general public that would be useful. However, there are worries about WuXi Biologics. There is a report in the Financial Times about facilities across Europe. I know some of this relates to issues outside Ireland, but we need to make sure the IDA has all the engagement necessary and to get clarity on that. We are talking about a huge facility in Dundalk.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank colleagues for their questions.

I turn first to Deputy Boyd Barrett's question on Cherrywood. I will inquire with the Department of housing about the situation with the town centre. I can say without getting overly involved, as someone who does not live a million miles away, that I know the scale of development that has happened there. There is no doubt a requirement for residents and workers to have access to community facilities, open spaces and the like.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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And shops.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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What I do not have, and what I cannot cut across are the planning conditions, but I will certainly inquire with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and ask that we revert to the Deputy on the issue. I thank him for highlighting it.

On Deputy Murphy's question, the issue of housing was raised at the competitiveness summit and the issue of housing is raised in all commentary and engagements I have with people making decisions to invest and grow their business in Ireland. There is of course the supply of housing, water infrastructure and energy infrastructure. They are the three big pieces of infrastructure about which I hear consistently from the people of Ireland, those who do business in Ireland and those who wish to do business in Ireland. Those are key as we move forward. That is why we took a decision in the budget to allocate €3 billion worth of money from the sale of AIB bank shares into those three areas, of which €1.25 billion is to be provided to the Land Development Agency to provide thousands more homes.

Personally, I believe that the generation that suffered most from the financial mismanagement of this country in the past, should now at least see the benefit from the sale of those shares.

We have these debates back and forth, as we should because housing is a major challenge. However, we already have an agency, the Land Development Agency, delivering homes on public lands. Indeed, I was with Deputy Boyd Barrett in his own constituency recently, where we saw Shanganagh Castle. We will see the provision of 600 homes there, many of which are now in place. That agency has huge potential to do much more. That is why we decided to put more money into it.

There is a broader question as we continue into future governments and future Oireachtais around its remit and whether that can be further expanded. The chief executive certainly said on that occasion that a number of projects are now being developed, providing housing developments using public land. This Government is absolutely determined to use all the levers, public, private, cost rental, social and affordable, everything we possibly can, to meet the variety of housing needs of people. We have huge housing challenges, of that there is no doubt. However, the level of State intervention in the housing market is now at an unprecedented level, as it should be, as we try to respond to this issue.

In regard to Deputy Ó Murchú's question, I remember visiting Dundalk Grammar School with him previously. I am not aware of the details of the dispute in question. I will leave that to be resolved locally. However, I know the students of Dundalk Grammar School to be of excellent calibre. I enjoyed taking questions from many of them not that long ago. In regard to the issue of pharma and the importance of that sector to the north east and to County Louth from an investment and jobs point of view, we are aware of this and keen to continue to work on it. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland are continuing to monitor carefully the situations and some of the developments the Deputy mentioned. I am happy to keep in touch on the issue.