Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

Ireland has suffered an enormous dislocation of employment as a result of the deep financial crisis and serious policy failures of the previous Government. In the three years prior to the Government taking office, over 300,000 jobs were lost. This scale of job loss cannot be reversed overnight.

This employment crisis is the central challenge facing Government. In response, the Government has developed the Action Plan for Jobs as a cross-Government response with timelines and milestones. This is the first in an annual process. We have challenges across a broad range of areas, for example in competitiveness, access to finance and reskilling. All of these are being addressed. It will take time to reverse the trends but I believe the new measures being adopted are putting us on the right track. We are making progress on the delivery of these actions and I am encouraged by the number of new job announcements which have been made since the beginning of this year, including 44 IDA announcements to the end of May with the potential to create in excess of 5,000 jobs.

The jobs crisis is reflected in the unemployment data which show that 60.6% of those who are unemployed have been out of work for 12 months or longer. This compares to 55% at the end of 2010. The percentage of people under 25 years of age who are unemployed is 29%, compared to 28% a year ago.

Tackling unemployment and supporting job creation are the key challenges facing Government. I work with the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, and other ministerial colleagues on an ongoing basis at Government and Cabinet committee level as we address these challenges. Deputy Burton's Pathways to Work initiative complements the work of the Action Plan for Jobs.

The objective of the action plan is to support the creation of 100,000 net new jobs in the economy by 2016, while the aim of Pathways to Work is to help ensure that as many of those jobs as possible are filled by people on the live register.

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