Idle Cork IDA park could yet have ‘high-quality’ jobs

The Government will work with local representatives to get “high-quality jobs” into a multi-million-euro North Cork IDA site that has been idle for two decades, a Cabinet minister has said.

The 19-acre IDA Technology Park on the Dublin Road, in Fermoy, was launched in 2002 to considerable fanfare, but it has never been occupied.

In 2009, a local councillor — Seamus Coleman, a Sinn Féin member of the then Fermoy Town Council — warned that the site was in danger of becoming “a picnic area”.

“I am concerned that all the money that has been spent on the park will be wasted and it will fall into disrepair, unless it is occupied soon,” Mr Coleman said.

Idle

Last week, Enterprise Minister Peter Burke was in Fermoy to launch the campaign office of his Fine Gael colleague, local county councillor Noel McCarthy, and was asked by reporters about the technology park, which has been idle for 22 years.

Mr Burke said that his department was “really trying our best to facilitate high-value jobs” and said Cork county had benefitted from a number of multinational investments in recent months and years.

“Obviously, we would like to try and prioritise as many areas as we can and we will be doing that, working with Noel [McCarthy] and others in the area, and trying to get as much high-quality investment as we can in,” Mr Burke said.

Mr Burke cautioned that Ireland’s offering, while competitive, had faced significant challenges in recent times, and he cited the outcome of today’s US presidential election as something that could potentially add to those challenges.