Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Since July 1997, State agencies under the auspices of my Department have been involved in 22 employment task forces. While no cost-benefit evaluation of these task forces has been undertaken the operational experience would strongly suggest that they were effective in providing a co-ordinated response to major company closures.

Large-scale job losses in an area are always a matter of concern given the impact on individual workers and their families as well as on the broader community. Nevertheless, we must set individual employment losses against continued employment expansion in the overall economy. The focus of the agencies is on finding alternative employment for the workers involved. This process has been facilitated by the success of the broader economy with over 270,000 jobs having been created over the past five years and the unemployment rate among the lowest in the European Union and significantly lower than that in France, Germany, Finland or Sweden. This has been helped in no small part by the Government's economic policies and my Department's support for enterprise through its agencies.

Employment growth and contraction are essential elements of the market economy in which Ireland has performed so well over the past decade. Developing a competitive economy, resilient to the toughest competitive pressures, is the optimal approach to sustainable employment growth. The Government is committed to delivering on the competitiveness agenda. For example, it will assess our competitive status every six months to ensure that all appropriate steps are being taken to maintain and improve on our recent achievements. In addition, I expect the enterprise strategy group under the chairmanship of Mr. Eoin O'Driscoll to report shortly on enterprise policy requirements for the decade ahead which will sustain and develop industry and our competitiveness.

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