Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 December 2016
264. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which economic development continues to spread evenly to all regions throughout the country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39320/16]
View answerThe Action Plan for Jobs is the Government’s key instrument to support job creation. The Action Plan for Jobs is working. Almost 190,000 more people are at work today than in 2012 when the first Plan was launched. The original target was to add an extra 100,000 jobs by the end of 2016. In the first nine months of 2016, 48,500 new jobs were created.
The unemployment rate was 7.3% in November 2016, down from 15.1% when the first Action Plan was launched in Q1 2012.
Employment has been growing continuously for 16 quarters and over the past year employment has grown in all regions. 72% of all jobs created in the past year were created outside Dublin.
I am currently working with ministerial colleagues to develop the 2017 Action Plan for Jobs. My priority is to ensure that the Plan is ambitious and impactful and keeps us on track to deliver on this Government’s goal to help create 200,000 additional jobs by 2020, including 135,000 outside Dublin. The success of the Regional Action Plans for Jobs is crucial to the Government in meeting this objective.
The Regional Action Plan initiative is working to address regional and rural job creation by bringing different stakeholders in each of the 8 regions together to identify innovative and practical actions, to be taken across a range of Departments and agencies, with clear timelines for delivery over the period 2015 – 2017.
Collaboration between the private and the public sector has been a core element in each plan’s development, and will be central to each plan’s delivery.
The first Progress Reports prepared by the 8 Regional Action Plan Implementation Committees have now been completed. While at an early stage, the reports show that good progress is being made in the implementation of the Regional APJs. All regions are on target to meet or exceed the job targets to be delivered by 2020.
The reports will be published shortly.
To support the regional jobs agenda, additional funds will be made available through the enterprise development agencies on a rolling basis out to 2020.
Last June, I announced an initial allocation of €5m in competitive funding for 48 local and regional initiatives under two of these calls. All regions benefited under this initiative.
In addition, as part of this process, my Department and Enterprise Ireland are both currently finalising proposals for:
a) a €40m regional funding initiative in respect of a large scale fund aimed at supporting significant innovative and collaborative projects and activities, and
b) a further competitive regional fund initiative (€5m) to support the development of community-based enterprises and networks that have the potential to grow and sustain jobs in their area.
Both funds will be rolled out in Q1 2017.
In addition, €150m will be made available to the IDA to support its Regional Property Programme and drive job creation in the multinational sector.
