Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

The role of my Department is to ensure that we have the right policies in place that will support and grow our enterprise base to facilitate job creation and job retention. The National Recovery Plan, published by the Government on 24 November 2010, provides a blueprint for Ireland's return to sustainable economic growth. It identifies the areas of activity, which will provide increased employment opportunities as Ireland's economic recovery takes place.

The plan sets out a range of specific actions and supports designed to improve competitiveness across all sectors of the economy. These include measures to cut costs to business, the removal of barriers to employment creation, and a range of sector-specific actions to increase exports and domestic demand.

In September, the Taoiseach launched the five-year integrated Government plan for trade, tourism and investment aimed at generating 300,000 jobs by the end of 2015. The new plan, entitled "Trading and Investing in a Smart Economy", is the first integrated strategy to promote overseas trade, tourism and investment. With this new strategy, the Government aims to position Ireland for strong export-led growth to 2015, resulting in high levels of job creation.

The plan aims to create more than 150,000 direct new jobs - IDA Ireland 75,000, Enterprise Ireland 60,000 and tourism 15,000 - in manufacturing, tourism and internationally traded services, with another 150,000 spin-off jobs. The programmes supported by my Department and its agencies will be critical in achieving a return to economic growth through promoting the export potential of enterprise in Ireland and advancing the smart economy agenda.

The allocation in budget 2011 of €508 million in capital funding will ensure that the enterprise agencies' core programmes are sustained and targeted. This will include actions to position Ireland as a global innovation hub.

The State development agencies - Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and the county and city enterprise boards - are continuing to drive and promote enterprise development and, consequently, employment creation in our economy. IDA Ireland continues to market and promote Ireland for inward investment. On 15 January, Intel, an IDA client company that already employs more than 4,000 people in Ireland, announced that it is to begin a substantial new €375-million construction project at its Leixlip technology campus.

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