Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

To the extent that the proposals for a jobs fund as set out in the programme for Government involve additional costs, these costs will have to be counterbalanced by offsetting measures to reduce expenditure or raise revenue. Over the coming weeks, I will be examining the options in this regard in conjunction with colleagues on the Economic Management Council and with the wider Cabinet. Full details of the measures, including the impact in 2011 and subsequent years, will be provided in the context of the Government's jobs fund, to which we are fully committed and will be bringing forward as a matter of priority.

The programme for Government sets out the measures that will be implemented as part of this process. These include, among others, a commitment to reverse the cut in the minimum wage, reduce the lower rate of VAT, halve the lower rate of PRSI, abolish the air travel tax conditional on the airlines fulfilling certain conditions and provide for an additional 15,000 places in training, work experience and educational opportunities for those who are out of work.

The Deputy will be aware that the Government has committed, in order to enhance international credibility, to adhere to the aggregate fiscal adjustment for the combined period 2011-12, as set out in the national recovery plan. As such, it is expected that the fiscal impact of the measures to be introduced will, in itself, be broadly neutral.

We are fully conscious of our responsibilities in terms of commitments that have been set out in the context of the joint EU-IMF programme of financial support for Ireland, both with regard to the fiscal adjustment measures that are to be implemented and the quantitative fiscal targets that must be met. During the recent meetings which the Minister, Deputy Howlin, and I attended with the programme partners, the external authorities agreed in principle that the conditions set out in the memorandum of understanding which underpinned the programme entered into last November could be amended to accommodate the new programme for Government, provided the overall targets remained unchanged.

As part of the new European semester to ensure proper ex ante co-ordination and surveillance of economic policies, member states, including Ireland, are required to submit an updated stability programme update to the European Commission by the end of April. Work is currently ongoing in the Department of Finance, in the context of the stability programme update, to update the economic and fiscal outlook. The stability programme update will contain revised economic and fiscal projections for 2011 and the period 2012-15.

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