Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 2 March 2017
370. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the unemployment figures for the south east, with a comparison with the figures nationally; and the steps she will take to create further jobs in the south east. [10939/17]
View answerThe most recent Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) undertaken by the CSO shows that the unemployment rate in the South East has fallen from a peak of 20.1% in 2012 to 9.4% in Q4 2016. This compares to the national average of 6.7%.
The South East Action Plan for Jobs is the key policy response for supporting employment growth in the South East region, with public and private stakeholders actively engaged in delivering a range of innovative and practical actions set out in the Plan.
The core objective of the Plan is to see a further 25,000 at work in the region by 2020 and to reduce the unemployment rate to within 1 percentage point of the State average.
Key sectors targeted in the South East as part of the Plan include agri-food, tourism, life sciences, manufacturing, retail and financial and business services. The first progress report on the implementation of the Action Plan to June 2016 was published in December last and shows that good progress is being made. The second Progress Report, which covers the period to end-2016, is currently being finalised and is expected to show similar progress.
Since 2012, the South East has had the fastest rate of jobs growth, in percentage terms, of any region in the country. Almost 215,000 are now at work in the South East - an increase of 33,500 since 2012.
While the current unemployment rate is still too high, these figures demonstrate that the overall trend is one of steady improvement.
In addition, both IDA and Enterprise Ireland are placing extra emphasis on regional development in their current strategies. IDA is targeting an uplift of 30-40% in investments in all regions outside Dublin by 2019. In this context, I was pleased to make two significant job announcements in recent weeks in the South East region. 140 jobs will be created in Kilkenny arising from new animation projects involving Mercury Filmworks of Canada and local studio Cartoon Saloon, while Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, will create up to 60 jobs in Waterford.
