Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In the action plan for jobs, the Government set an ambitious target of having 100,000 more people at work by 2016. Achieving this target requires a transformational change to our economy. This Government, when it came into office, was starting from a position where more than 300,000 jobs had been lost in the previous three years. Of those job losses, 150,000 were in the construction sector alone. The economy had been built on a fault line of sectors that were not sustainable in the long term.

The new economy, which we need to build, must be based on enterprise, innovation and exporting. The transformation we need to bring about will require progress on a number of fronts, including fixing our banks, reforming the public sector and embedding the jobs agenda across Government through the action plan for jobs. This is a huge task but we are making progress.

After three years of heavy job losses, we are now seeing a substantial increase in employment in export-oriented sectors. This has been backed by new policy initiatives and a strong programme of trade missions. Overall, the level of private sector employment is stabilising despite continued decline in sectors like construction and domestic banking.

There has been a strong performance by both Enterprise Ireland and IDA-backed companies. 2011 saw an increase of 6,000 jobs in IDA-supported companies, compared to net losses of 15,000 jobs between 2008 and 2010. So far this year, the IDA has announced investments with the potential to create more than 7,500 further jobs. In the case of Enterprise Ireland, we start to see a return to growth in Enterprise Ireland companies and approvals this year amount to 4,669 job commitments over the next three years. There has been double digit growth in exports from Enterprise Ireland companies and we reached a record of €15 billion in exports last year.

Sectors targeted in the action plan for jobs have made good progress, notably food, life sciences, ICT, digital games and international services. These developments demonstrate the transformation taking place to a more diversified, export-oriented and innovative economy. While we have seen a turnaround, I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge that still faces us. As a small open economy, we are influenced heavily by the challenging developments in international markets.

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However, the merit of the action plan for jobs is that every year, each Department is required to focus on changes that can be brought about to make a practical contribution to the target of supporting the creation of 100,000 extra jobs in the economy by 2016.

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