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

I will go through all of the items. Most members are familiar with the Action Plan for Jobs process. Each year we consult business, enterprise, those on both sides of industry and entrepreneurs to try to identify pressure points. We then seek to address them throughout Government. This year is no different. I will not go through all of the areas; I will just highlight some where we have a new focus this year. One is entrepreneurship, where we believe, following the Sean O'Sullivan report, there is much more we can do. We will have a youth entrepreneurship fund and we will streamline mentoring. The 31 local enterprise offices will be linked to the centres of excellence. We will target more female, young and overseas entrepreneurs to try to improve the entire environment.

Another area is strengthening our platform overseas to win new investment and additional trade. We received sanction for 34 more IDA personnel overseas and 20 more Enterprise Ireland personnel overseas. The IDA has a target of 6,000 direct additional jobs over five years and Enterprise Ireland has targets in respect of additional exports to be generated.

Another theme is manufacturing. Last year we had a forum on manufacturing and we believe there is potential to drive our manufacturing capability. This year we will have a targeted approach with regard to 200 mid-sized manufacturing companies which have the capacity to grow, two thirds of which are Enterprise Ireland companies and one third of which are IDA companies. We will target more manufacturing start-ups and will focus our research and development and tech centres on manufacturing. Through the Department of Education and Skills we hope to develop new apprenticeship areas in manufacturing.

The committee is concerned about access to finance, and we have a commitment to improve the terms of the credit guarantee. We are examining new ways to sweat the existing instruments and we have expanded the reach of the Credit Review Office. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, announced an initiative to strengthen the capability of small and medium enterprises to deal with banks. We have a continuing commitment to extend the range of alternative finance, examining in particular crowd-funding and peer-to-peer lending. These new areas are growing rapidly in some countries.

We will also have continuing emphasis on sectors of opportunity and improving the business environment. These are areas that have become the bread and butter of the annual process. This year we will place a particular focus on skills. SOLAS will publish its strategy before the end of next month and we will roll out actions on the apprenticeship review.

Some of the issues targeted by the committee have been picked up with regard to unemployment and youth unemployment . We will try to build programmes with stronger linkages to the labour market.

That is a focus of the Department's work in the areas of both activation and skills. As for a national youth strategy on entrepreneurship, effectively we will start that process with a youth entrepreneurship fund. The revamp and the reform of the apprenticeship system, which the joint committee highlighted, will be implemented this year. On the social economy, as members are aware, the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, is working on a group in the social enterprise area and it is hoped to have actions arising therefrom in the course of the year.

As for the joint committee's second report on mentoring, as part of the partnership focus, the Department has commissioned work on mentoring and has carried out an evaluation. I have just recently had sight of this report, which will be published. There has been an evaluation carried out of our mentoring programmes which, as members are aware, are scattered. Some are funded by the State, such as those in the local enterprise offices, Enterprise Ireland and Skillnets, but there are many other players in that environment. The aim will be to try to sharpen and improve the quality of mentoring, to have greater benchmarking of precisely what is achieved by mentoring projects and to try to deliver a better service. The creation of the centre of excellence in Enterprise Ireland, which will oversee both the mentoring activities of the LEOs and the agency's own mentoring programme, provides a tool with which to work on streamlining in this area. While Deputy Áine Collins is not present today, she has been extremely active in this area.

As for the south east, the Department continues to have an action plan for the south east in terms of its performance and we have had some very good wins. The overall employment numbers in the south east published last week were exceptionally good with a net increase in employment in that region of 15,000 and a reduction of 3.3% in the unemployment rate over the year. That almost was the best regional performance in the country. There have been a number of successes, many of them on the Enterprise Ireland and indigenous side, as opposed to the foreign direct investment, FDI, side, although there were some FDI investments such as Nypro. However, the Department continues to have a focus on the south east, which, even though it has improved, still has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Its industrial base needs to be strengthened and the IDA has committed to build a 2,500 sq. m life sciences facility this year, which again is a recognition that its enterprise infrastructure must be strengthened. Much of what was in that report goes well beyond my areas of responsibility but they are continuing concerns in respect of the action plan for the south east.

I can probably answer questions on the budget allocations, as they are published. However, it is hard to go through them as they are merely presented in tabular form. However, there may be underlying issues with which I could deal. On the moratorium on recruitment to Enterprise Ireland, since 2009 the agency has reduced its staff by approximately 20% and there undoubtedly has been considerable consolidation in Enterprise Ireland. To be fair to Enterprise Ireland, a huge number of staff members, approximately 250 of them, have changed their roles. In other words, there has been huge adaptation of existing staff to the challenges and programmes that have evolved. Naturally, matters continue to evolve and new things have been done in the recession, such as setting up a potential exporters division, greatly enhancing the area that considers lean processes in the existing manufacturing base to try to improve processes therein. Moreover, there have been efforts to establish a stronger technology transfer operation. The position is changing and evolving continually as, for example, female entrepreneurship now has become a major part of Enterprise Ireland's work. I believe concern regarding this issue arose on foot of an internal audit that indicated this pace of change was placing strain on the organisation, which undoubtedly it is. However, to be fair both to those employed and the leadership, that is, both Frank Ryan and now Julie Sinnamon, in my view it has been a really strong organisation as an example of reinventing itself continually even in a difficult environment. It has not failed to deliver on any of its key commitments in respect of the Action Plan for Jobs. I consider it to be a good organisation working in a difficult area with diminishing resources but that is the reality for all my agencies, with the exception of the IDA, which has been protected because of the crucial role that has been playing in recent years.