Both Enterprise Ireland (the state agency charged with supporting exporting indigenous enterprises) and the IDA (the state agency responsible for supporting Foreign Direct Investment) issued very upbeat end-of-year statements this week. So, how did the region’s fare?
Enterprise Ireland
In 2015 total employment in EI client companies was 192,223, of which 165,630 were full-time jobs. 2015 saw the highest level of new jobs created by EI supported companies in the agency’s history (about 17 years) with 21,118 new jobs created. Taking into account job losses over the year, the net increase was about half this at 10,169 net new jobs.
Of this net increase in EI client jobs, 64% occurred outside of Dublin. It is notable that the regional performance got considerably greater focus in this year’s end-of-year statement Press Release than has been the case for the past number of years. The evident dissatisfaction in many regional locations caused by a two-speed jobs recovery, which led to the preparation of the regional Action Plans for Jobs and several other regional EI initiatives last year, has led to greater emphasis on regional performance in this year’s end-of-year statement. As indeed has the fact that that performance has been quite strong.
While the overall regional picture may be quite strong, the relative performance across the various regions differs (Fig. 1). The increase in jobs in EI client companies in 2015, compared with 2014, varied from +36% in Dublin to just +2% in the North West. Indeed the North West, Mid-West and West – the three EI regions covering the Western Region – had the lowest increases in job numbers across the country at +2%, +3% and +5% respectively. Sticking with the two-speed jobs recovery metaphor, the Western Region appears to be running at the lowest speed of all, at least in the context of indigenous exporting companies.
Fig. 1: Infographic from the Enterprise Ireland end-of-year statement 2015 https://enterprise-ireland.com/en/News/PressReleases/2016-Press-Releases/End-of-Year-Statement-2015.PDF
A previous WDC Insights Blog post highlighted the particular issue of the North West’s poor performance in terms of all types of agency assisted employment (EI, IDA and Udarás). Between 2005 and 2014 the North West experienced the largest decline in agency assisted jobs of any region in Ireland. And now in 2015 it’s the region with the lowest increase in EI supported jobs. This points to a very real concern for the North West’s capacity to generate new employment in export focused businesses, even when Ireland is experiencing some of its strongest ever jobs growth in this type of business.
IDA
2015 saw the highest level of employment in IDA client companies in the organisation’s 67 year history reaching 187,056. A total of 18,983 new jobs were created by their clients during 2015, when job losses are taken into account, there was net job creation of 11,833, slightly higher than that recorded by EI clients.
Similar to EI, the IDA’s end-of-year statement gives more focus to regional performance than in some previous years. Overall, 53% of all jobs created by IDA clients in 2015 were based outside of Dublin, which is an improvement over the 49% share in 2014.
While 53% of new jobs were created outside of Dublin in 2015, this area accounts for 59% of total employment in IDA backed companies. The legacy of past investments in more regional locations continues to influence the overall pattern of FDI jobs, even as new investments tend to be attracted to more urban areas.
The IDA end-of-year statement doesn’t provide detail on the differences across the regions, though it does note that every region experienced an increase in employment in IDA backed companies. It will be very interesting to see the detailed regional breakdown of this performance to see if it shows a similar inter-regional pattern to the EI client companies, with the Western Region having the lowest growth. Although the strength of Galway in attracting FDI means the West region may show a stronger performance in foreign owned employment in 2015 than in Irish owned.
While overall, 2015 was very positive in terms of regional job creation by both EI and IDA client companies, the inter-regional differences in the results for EI companies would indicate that more needs to be done to increase the pace of the jobs recovery in the Western Region.
Pauline White
WDC Insights 