The Republic's shoddy road network could be costing jobs in the areas outside Dublin, the chief executive of IDA Ireland has said. In the capital, infrequent and unreliable public transport is now a problem for employers. The issue of access in general, including bad service to regional airports, must be addressed, Mr Kieran McGowan said.

Each year, the IDA carries out a detailed survey of a representative sample of 100 from its 1,000 or more companies. The results are usually not released by the agency but used to identify and deal with current and future problems.

But in an interview with The Irish Times, Mr McGowan said this year's survey bore out his worst fears about how the Irish road network was seen by major foreign companies. While Ireland's geographic position has always been a consideration, being able to get executives into and out of the State quickly is being raised more and more as a problem.

Firms with pan-European operations in particular need to be able to send managers to Ireland, or send Irish executives to continental locations, without it becoming a major excursion.

"Travel time is not a day trip, but two to three days, compared with what can be done from a central European location in one day," said an Irish manager of a multinational company surveyed.

The further from Dublin, the worse the roads are, and the larger the problem, Mr McGowan said. Recently, IDA negotiators said they were only able to persuade Oxford Health Plans to open a 750-job factory in Mullingar because they could prove that the town was less than an hour away from Dublin airport and that the new road provided efficient access.

"If the roads were better, it would make regional dispersal easier," Mr McGowan said this week.

The survey also revealed heavy criticism of Dublin's public transport system, with many major companies saying bad service was hindering their operations.

In the Sandyford Industrial Estate and the East Point Business Park alone, 70 per cent of all companies described the system as "inadequate".

Air service from regional airports is also causing problems, according to the survey.

"The cheapest fare to London from Cork at £240 is ludicrous," one chief executive said. "The 6.30 a.m. flight from Cork to Dublin doesn't get very many European connections. Customers want things to be near them."