Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 December 2018
288. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the Programme for a Partnership Government commitment to prioritise balanced regional development that will aim to allow for an unemployment rate in each county that is within 1% of the State average by 2020. [52819/18]
View answerThe Central Statistics Office (CSO) does not regularly produce county-level unemployment rate data, apart from at each Census. The CSO publishes the Labour Force Survey (LFS) on a quarterly basis (the LFS replaced the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) from Q3 2017).
The LFS is a large-scale, nationwide survey of households in Ireland. It is designed to produce quarterly labour force estimates that include the official measure of employment and unemployment in the State. Unemployment rates at NUTS 3 regional level are available through the LFS.
The recently published LFS (Q3 2018) employment figures are overall very positive. Figures show that employment continues to grow strongly with 66,700 jobs created in the year from Q3 2017 to Q3 2018. This brings total employment to 2,273,000 (not seasonally adjusted).
The number of people in employment has increased in six of the eight regions in the year from Q3 2017 to Q3 2018. The exception to this is the Mid-West (which has remained static) and the Border region.
Since becoming Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, I have made jobs and enterprise in the regions my top priority. We want to have a situation where all regions are enabled to realise their potential as contributors to economic recovery and growth, and thereby reduce regional disparities.
The Regional Action Plan for Jobs initiative is a central pillar of the Government’s ambition to create 200,000 new jobs by 2020, 135,000 of which are outside of Dublin.
Since the launch of the Regional Action Plan for Jobs (RAPJ) there has been an increase of 258,800 people in employment across the State (Q1 2015 to Q3 2018), with 163,500 people in the regions outside of Co. Dublin entering employment in that period (or three out of every five jobs created).
A key objective of the initiative is to have a further 10 to 15 per cent at work in each region by 2020, with the aim of having the unemployment rate of each region reduced to within one percentage point of the State average. Figures from the CSO LFS show that as of Q3 2018, six out of eight Regions have a further 10 - 15 per cent at work. Five out of eight Regions have unemployment rates within the one percentage point target (see Table).
|
Region |
Unemployment Rate Q1 2015 |
Unemployment Rate Q3 2018 |
|
Border |
8.6 |
5.1 |
|
Midland |
14.9 |
7.1 |
|
West |
12.6 |
6.6 |
|
Dublin |
9.1 |
5.3 |
|
Mid-East |
9.6 |
5.8 |
|
Mid-West |
12.0 |
7.2 |
|
South-East |
11.7 |
8.6 |
|
South-West |
10.5 |
4.9 |
|
State |
10.5 |
6.0 |
Source: CSO Labour Force Survey, Q3 2018 (Table 9), not seasonally adjusted.
Government policies are working but of course we always want to do more. That’s why in April this year I asked all the RAPJ Committees to start a process to refresh and refocus all of the Regional Action Plans to 2020. This is to ensure that the Plans are strategically focused, relevant, and can be robust to address the challenges we face, including Brexit.
In October last, I met with the Chairpersons again to hear directly about the progress made to date and all Regions are working towards completion of their refreshed Plans with a view to publication in Q1 next year. My Department is also working closely with the agencies (IDA, EI and the LEOs) and other relevant stakeholders, in relation to the refresh of the Plans.
