Speech by the Taoiseach, Mr. Enda Kenny T.D., at the official launch of West Pharma’s new investment in Waterford in the Tower Hotel, Waterford

I am delighted to be here today in Waterford to announce this major investment by West Pharma.

The development of a new world class manufacturing facility here in Waterford is a huge boost for the entire South East region.

The confidence boost from a substantial and highly visible investment like this cannot be underestimated.

The economy is now growing strongly again. New manufacturing facilities are being built with many new jobs created.

I understand this investment by West Pharma will see 100 construction jobs created during the building phase of the new facility and then an initial 150 high quality jobs will be created when it’s operational.

This is excellent news for our country.

It comes on top of yesterday’s announcements of hundreds of new jobs created in Dublin and Limerick. We also saw the Live Register dropping for the 27th month in a row with the unemployment rate falling again to 11.1%.

Building on our strong track record in the medtech and pharma sector is a key objective of this Government.

The sector employs over 50,000 people here, with a high proportion of high quality, highly paid jobs, and it contributes significantly to national exports. This is a fast-changing sector, and one with great opportunities.

The Government has made a strong commitment to make Ireland an attractive location in which medtech and pharmaceutical companies can thrive.

We have invested hugely in our education system so that companies like yours will have access to appropriately skilled staff.

We have also provided significant funding for scientific research, in order to drive science and innovation up the agenda, and thereby create the right climate and knowledge base to embed the Life Sciences sector in Ireland.

Our ‘Action Plan for Jobs’ includes a particular focus on using research and innovation to drive job creation. It aims to ensure that publicly funded R&D is oriented to the needs of manufacturing sectors and it supports increased engagement by manufacturing enterprises with research and technology centres.

Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) recently undertook the largest ever state/industry co-funded research investment in Ireland, involving €300m in funding which created 7 world-class research centres. A number of these are in the medtech and life sciences area and are highly relevant to your business.

With such support we have great confidence in the future of manufacturing in Ireland.

The West Pharma investment is a very welcome addition to the manufacturing base in this region.

But as you know as we meet here today we have reached a very significant juncture on our road to economic recovery.

The Budget in two weeks time will offer yet another opportunity to introduce measures to support and encourage greater job creation in all sectors of the economy.

Maintaining a stable investment environment by keeping to our plan to restore the public finances is essential for jobs and confidence in our economy. We are fully committed to getting the deficit down to below 3% next year.

The 2015 version of our Action Plan for Jobs is currently in preparation and it will set out new plans to help cutting edge companies like West Pharma.

We in Government are working hard to ensure Ireland remains one of the best places in the world to do business, and we will continue to work to make the country and our individual regions, such as the South East, as attractive as possible.

We are taking focused action through the South East Action Plan to address the needs of this particular region.

All of the agencies here, including the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs, are working closely together to address the specific employment challenge faced by this region. It is great to see this work bearing fruit, both through today’s investment, a number of other high profile investments such as Eishtech, Glanbia, Sanofi, Nypro and others and a huge range of investments by other companies across the region.

These investments are a reflection of the Government’s commitment to the region and the progress we have achieved to date in getting the country back to work.

Our ‘Action Plan for Jobs’ is bringing tangible results with 70,000 additional jobs created nationwide since we launched the plan.

Today’s announcement builds on this success.

I would like to thank everyone involved and to wish the company every success in their exciting development.