Cork East Fianna Fáil TD Ned O'Keeffe yesterday accused the Government of failing to heed the warning signs about Amgen and said that IDA Ireland did not properly assess the risk of the company not proceeding with its 1,100-job plant in east Cork.
Mr O'Keeffe said the announcement by Amgen that it is postponing indefinitely its plan to open a $1 billion (€800 million) plant at Carrrigtwohill came as no surprise to him, given the difficulty the company was experiencing to get US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for some of its drugs in the US.
Mr O'Keeffe said he had expressed doubts about the project going ahead as planned during the general election campaign, but that he had been "shouted down by others in Fianna Fáil and in the Opposition", who accused him of talking down the project.
"We messed people up, the Government and Fianna Fáil and some of the Opposition too, because we raised people's hopes by talking about the scale and the investment and the timeframe when we should have been more cautious," he said.
Mr O'Keeffe totally rejected Opposition suggestions that Amgen decided not to proceed with the plant before the general election, but delayed announcing it until after the election.
"That's ridiculous - Amgen didn't give two hoots who won the election," he said.
However, Mr O'Keeffe was strongly critical of IDA Ireland and said the agency failed to analyse properly trends in the American economy and pharmaceutical sector that pointed to the biotechnology firm not proceeding with its Carrigtwohill plant.
"I assessed the situation on the basis of business information I was reading in the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph that Amgen was having problems getting approval for its drugs from the US Food and Drug Administration.
"It was quite obvious with the state of the American economy, the problems Amgen were having with product development and the closure of some of its American plants that it wasn't going to go ahead here, but the IDA obviously had their head in the sand," he said.
However, Mr O'Keeffe's criticisms were strongly rejected by IDA Ireland's press manager, Ruth Croke, who pointed out that the decision by Amgen to postpone the Cork project was an "internal corporate decision that was only taken in the past few days".
Ms Croke said that when Amgen informed IDA Ireland last April of its rescheduling of the Cork project, the company had assured both the IDA and the Government that the project was going ahead and that the IDA accepted this assurance.
"We totally reject any suggestion that we failed to properly analyse the situation - every prospective investment wanting to locate in Ireland undergoes a rigorous assessment by us before we decide to support - and Amgen underwent such an assessment," she said.
Meanwhile, local Cork Cllr John Mulvihill (Labour) expressed concern that taxpayers might be left to foot the bill for work carried out by Cork County Council to prepare the site at Carrigtwohill for the company's proposed plant.
"My information is the council spent close to €20 million on water, sewage and road works in Carrigtwohill in preparation for Amgen and that Amgen have indicated they will honour their commitments of around €6 million, but who is going to pay the shortfall?" Mr Mulvihill asked.
