Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin with Senator Cullinane's last question. We have had extraordinarily strong employment performance in the past 12 months. The figures are suggesting 3.2% growth in employment against a pretty subdued GDP growth background. At the moment, I think GNP is a better indicator of true activity because of the impact of the so-called patent cliff on nominal values of pharmaceutical exports and profit repatriation. We are delivering very strong employment performance which is reflected in the increasing activity across the sectors of the economy. I refer to the strong performance of agriculture and food and IDA and Enterprise Ireland-supported companies in the areas of industrial exports, business services, ICT, for example. We are seeing the emergence of strong sectors which are creating employment.

That is bringing down the unemployment rate. We are already at 12.6%, as of the October figures published today, so the 12.3% is certainly achievable.

The pick-up in growth will help the delivery of employment. My experience with companies active in the export markets is that there is a good pipeline of investment and promising opportunities. We need a stable environment at European level in order to deliver these numbers. In the meantime, we are showing our ability to achieve employment growth even in a more difficult economic climate.

We support member states' national control measures under the posting of workers directive. That issue came down to a question of numbers. There has been an effort to split the difference between a fixed and open number, and that will probably be the position. We have had observations from the committee on this issue. The view of both the committee and the Department is that we should avoid the imposition of unnecessary administrative burdens on businesses. This is a new and untested area in that joint and several liability is not something to which we have been accustomed. Member states have the freedom to impose new measures under Article 9, with a role for the Commission in monitoring their compliance with EU law. There will be the ability to do more in this regard, but all such proposals will have to be shown to be reasonable.