We welcome Objective 7.13 Suburban General Offices

We are concerned that Objective 7.10 New Strategic Employment Sites does not explicitly prevent general offices, call centres and tech firms from locating in these light industrial locations.

A large portion of our membership has relocated to Cork to work for major employers in the city. One of the biggest difficulties they have with life and Cork, other than the lack of suitable accommodation, is the location of offices in inaccessible, remote, suburban locations.

We therefore strongly welcome the commitment in in objective 7.13 to concentrate general office accommodation in the city centre and a number of highly accessible district centres.

We are however extremely worried that objective 7.10 does not specifically prevent the location of general offices, call centres and tech firms in in the proposed strategic employment zones, which are almost all in remote inaccessible locations which would present serious difficulties to any international worker who was employed at such a site. This presents a problem both for workers to arrive in Cork not realising that they cannot walk cycle or easily take public transport to such offices. It also presents a serious competitiveness challenge for the cork region as highly skilled workers regularly quit their jobs when offices are located in such locations to move to cities where they can more easily live and work in a city centre environment.