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

I agree with the Deputy that competitiveness is crucial to our economic progress and the Deputy should acknowledge that exports from Irish-owned firms have been the star performers in our recovery. Last year, Irish-owned exporters created more jobs than the IDA. Most of the debate focuses on the IDA, but Irish-owned exporting companies created more jobs in 2014 than foreign-owned companies, and it is important to remember that.

We have focused very much on competitiveness which has been a key feature of the Action Plan for Jobs. We lost a great deal of competitiveness during the crash. That saw a declining export market share in the economy, which undermined our competitiveness. Since then, we have undertaken a range of measures to improve competitiveness, including many structural reforms. We have sought to make work pay, to improve access to finance for business, to streamline regulatory processes and to reduce the administrative burdens by establishing new rules on incorporation. We have improved our domestic cost base. Unit wage cost is estimated to have improved by 20% relative to our competitors. The exporting sectors of our economy are creating jobs at record levels and we have doubled trade missions to support that. We have improved our competitive tax regime, particularly in respect of innovation and start-ups. We have invested significantly in skill areas where there have been gaps, especially in ICT.

As a result of these efforts, we have seen significant improvement in our international ranking for competitiveness, but as I said to Deputy Calleary, we certainly are not complacent about this. We always need to be attentive to that. We have the National Competitiveness Council, which now reports to the Cabinet sub-committee on a number of occasions per year to underline the areas where we can make improvements. We seek to act on those reports and incorporate their recommendations, where we can, into our action plan.

See this speech in context