Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Dara Calleary for his compliments to the staff of the Department. A superhuman effort was made across all areas. There was Horizon 2020, a trade deal and accountancy directives. Many people who stayed at home had to take up the slack to keep the ordinary work going. It was a major effort and I thank the Deputy for his comments.

While the Action Plan for Jobs seeks to harness the entire Government to focus on employment creation, that does not mean that I am responsible in the House for questions in areas that fall outside my remit. I can understand the Deputy's frustration, but EU youth employment measures, with funds of €6 to €8 billion, will virtually all be covered in interventions by the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Education and Skills. That is the way it is structured, with ESF money, and it is not within the arena of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Therefore, I am not answerable for it. Clearly, we seek to give an enterprise view of what is relevant through the high level group on skills needs and seek, through this process, to ensure opportunities are available.

No doubt much of it will be used to fund Momentum, Springboard and JobBridge. They must be associated with enterprises which are capable of growing. That is where we have a common purpose.

The Deputy raised the issue of the multiples. That is part of the consumer legislation on which we are continuing to work. We hope to publish it this month, but getting through the legislative process is challenging. The Deputy is right that the test of the success of JobsPlus will be in its roll-out. As we did last year for Government schemes, we will use the CRO, our own enterprise offices and every channel at our disposal to promote not only this scheme but others which are very relevant to business, whether to access finance which the Deputy rightly recognised, seed capital, tax breaks and so on. We will produce promotional material to be used online. This year we will have the one-stop-shop process through the local enterprise offices.

The Deputy is right that the last quarter export numbers were somewhat surprising. A lot of things are happening. As the Deputy rightly said, some products are coming off patent which will impact on the value of the trade. Some of our trading partners have been in real difficulty, but the underlying employment numbers in these sectors have been pretty solid. We need to see a little-----