CORK could become the "California of the south coast" if its rich tradition as a marketing centre was fostered, according to Mr Ned O'Keeffe (FF, Cork East).
Mr O'Keeffe recounted the county's merchant history and said it was the location for Ireland's first butter market as well as the site of the first Ford car factory outside Detroit.
"Cork, as the transatlantic gateway to Canada and the US, has real Silicon Valley potential," he said. "The prosperous cooperatives of the south west and a tourist industry of global reputation need to be sustained through a coherent strategy if the region wishes to keep its young people and expand its growth."
He was speaking on the second day of a two day debate on Cork and the south west in which Fianna Fail accused the Government of neglecting the southern region.
In a Private Members motion, the party's education spokesman, Mr Micheal Martin accused the Government of failing to ensure balanced economic development. He said it had also failed to provide sufficient educational resources to tackle high unemployment.
He added that Cork had not benefited from new jobs to the extent it should have. The IDA announced a total of 17,725 new jobs in 1996. Dublin got 12,559 or 71 per cent of the jobs while Cork got just 1,246 or 7 per cent. The number of redundancies in Cork last year was more than 1,000.
The Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Mr Bruton, said there was a strong upward employment trend in Forbairt companies in Cork city and county where there was a net gain of 775 jobs last year and almost 1,200 new jobs were created.
He said the Government had achieved a record 7.6 per cent rate of job growth in the southwest, more than 50 per cent ahead of the rate of job growth in the previous two years. Unemployment had fallen by 17.8 per cent and was now below the national rate of 12.9 per cent.