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

Let us consider the Irish economy other than in the period when it was overheating. Full employment was in the range of 5% to 6%. That is where we aim to get to by 2020. However, one of our key ambitions is that it will be a sustainable level of full employment and that the economy will not be subject to the buffeting that happened when we were reliant on the construction sector to get to those low rates.

We want to build a strong economy. The Minister for Social Protection set out a number of successful programmes that have delivered more people from the unemployment numbers. Let us consider the fall in the unemployment rate. It has consistently outperformed forecasts because we have been successful in getting people from the live register onto work schemes. In 2015, the year gone by, 135,000 people left the live register to take up work. That is a strong performance. As a proportion of those unemployed, that is the highest in five years, with some 42% leaving the live register to take up work. Strategies such as Pathways to Work are impacting on the live register and we aim to continue and improve them.

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