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

The action plan for jobs contains concrete measures that show improvement. Consider the economy's overall employment performance. When we entered into government, the average figure for job losses in the private sector was 90,000 per year. In the past 12 months, private sector employment has expanded by 12,000. This expansion is being driven by the export-oriented sectors on which we have placed our main emphasis in the plan, for example, ICT, pharmaceuticals and digital gaming. We have targeted growth in these sectors and they are performing well. We need to build upon this expansion. That Irish exporting companies added more than 3,000 jobs in 2012 is a turnaround.

There are pathways for individuals. We also have a "pathways for work" approach, in which the Ministers, Deputies Quinn and Burton, are providing JobBridge, the new momentum scheme and the Springboard scheme. These initiatives are aimed at assisting people who are out of work to access the areas of employment that we are opening up through our enterprise approach. There is a clear momentum and route. People can see that the plan is working.

We continue to have the ambition of creating 100,000 jobs. We know that we must do better and continue to build. However, turning around a situation in which 90,000 jobs were being lost per year to one in which jobs are being added in the private sector is a significant change.

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