DCU Business School hosts conference on Foreign Direct Investment

On 6 May, Dublin City University Business School hosted a conference on the future attractiveness of Ireland for Inward Foreign Direct Investment. Speakers and panelists at the university included Jack Chambers TD, Minister of State in the Department of Transport, Laura Burke, Director General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mary Buckley, Executive Director IDA and Gerry Kilcommins, VP Global Manufacturing Medtronic. 

The conference brought together enterprise, academics, policymakers, and administrators to begin a conversation on future issues in maintaining Ireland's attractiveness.

Ahead of the conference, Dr Kate Hynes, Assistant Professor in Economics and conference chair, outlined the areas under discussion:

“Speakers discussed policy priorities, taxation, sustainability, infrastructure, future skills development, international trends in inward foreign direct investment, its economic impact in Ireland and the role of subsidies and incentives. We sought to understand the type of sustainable foreign direct investment needed across the country - and to discover how Ireland can invest now in policies that create an environment that bolsters this growing sector.”

At the morning session, joint conference chair Tony Foley, Associate Professor Emeritus of Economics at DCU, explained how he hoped the conference would contribute to enhanced research attention on the topic:

“Ireland’s high labour productivity and our position as a strong exporter in modern sectors relies primarily on the presence of inward foreign direct investment, but the continuation of the scale of this contribution is by no means certain. We are living in a changed and changing international economic environment, and we need to discuss how the development of new and existing projects can enhance Ireland’s attractiveness for future growing foreign direct investment.”