Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The CSO's quarterly national household survey, QNHS, shows that there was an annual increase in employment of 3.3% or 61,000 in the year to the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing total employment to just over 1.9 million. Employment increased in ten of the 14 economic sectors over the year and fell in four.

The increase recorded in agriculture, forestry and fishing was up 29% or 26,800, giving a total of 116,800. The CSO has advised that due to necessary changes in the sampling framework introduced incrementally to reflect the 2011 census of population, the first fully valid year-on-year comparisons for the agriculture sector will only be available from Quarter 4 of 2014.

The CSO does not publish figures for the sub-sectors within agriculture, but QNHS data for Quarter 4 of 2013 shows that the agrifood sector makes a significant contribution to employment at national and regional levels. Table 1 sets out the employment figures for the total agrifood sector, including primary agriculture, forestry and fishing, as well as food, beverage and wood processing, and calculates its share of total employment by NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 region. This shows that while the agrifood sector accounted for over 9% of total employment in the State as a whole, it accounted for over 14% of employment in the Border, midlands and western, BMW, region. These figures underline the importance of the sector at a regional level, as well as the opportunities for further development that the implementation of Food Harvest 2020 will bring.

I am not sure whether Deputy Ó Cuív has a copy of the reply, but we break it down into the Border, midlands, west, Dublin, mid-east, mid-west, south-east and south-west regions in terms of the percentage of people employed in agriculture as regards total employment in those regions. The highest percentages are 15.3% in the midlands, 15.2% in the south-east, 14.3% in the Border region and 14.1% in the west. Obviously, the lowest percentage is in Dublin at 2%.

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