Ms Julie Sinnamon:

There is always a churn. In fact, the losses for that year were the lowest losses we have seen for any period since 2000 so it has been declining. The losses were spread across all of the sectors. There was not any one particular sector that accounted for it. There was an ongoing churn of companies that are reducing employment and companies going in and out of business. Most of them are in smaller sized companies with small losses across a large number of companies.

Much of the work that we have done in order to stem that decrease in jobs over the period has been to work on lean manufacturing with the companies to try to improve their competitiveness to help them to grow their sales. We also work with them to grow their sales in export markets because there is going to be growth through growth in sales and competitiveness that they continue. We are not just focusing on the new jobs. We have a major focus in terms of working on the ongoing competitiveness of the existing base of companies to try to reduce that which is coming through in terms of a reduction in job losses. It is still a figure which is too high and that is why we are continuing to try to drive the competitiveness agenda.