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

The Deputy should understand that what we can influence is the number of jobs that are created. That is the central target we have always set ourselves. It was a target of 100,000 and it is now a 200,000 target. Obviously, projecting the impact that has on the number of unemployed will depend on a number of factors that are less easy for a government to predict exactly because they include the flow of inward and outward migration, a natural increase in the labour force and so on. Essentially, we are predicting and building our targets around a growth of 10% in the total number at work. We envisage that a significant part of that will impact on those who are out of work and that has been the record in recent years. That ten points will be spread between reducing the 8.8% rate below 6% as well as accommodating 70,000 people who we now believe can be attracted to come home.

We have not changed the job targets in any way but I suppose we are being a little more conservative in terms of when the 6% rate will be reached. That is part of official forecasting.

I remind the Deputy that when I launched the Action Plan for Jobs and forecasted 100,000 extra jobs, the Department of Finance forecasted that unemployment this year would be 11.6%. We have comfortably beaten that because of the ambition we have set and the implementation that we have delivered.

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