Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. As he will be aware from his recent role in the Department, a whole-of-Government strategy for the development of the international financial services sector up to 2025 was launched in April 2019. The strategy, known as Ireland for Finance, is structured around action measures grouped together under several pillars: operating environment, technology and innovation, talent and communications, and promotion. There are also horizontal priorities - regionalisation, sustainable finance and workplace diversity - which apply across all four areas. The vision of this strategy is for Ireland to be a top-tier location of choice for specialist international financial services and to enhance and protect our future competitiveness.

The employment strategy aims to see 50,000 people in direct employment in the sector by 2025. According to enterprise agencies, approximately 47,000 people worked in international financial services at the end of 2019, which represented an increase of approximately 11,500 from 2015. I am pleased to report that the Ireland for Finance strategy was included in the programme for Government. We expect to bring an updated Ireland for Finance action plan 2020 to the Government for approval and publication in the next few weeks. Stakeholders have been working on the action measures in this draft of the strategy. The updated strategy was delayed because of the general election, as it includes policy measures which could only be taken by an incoming Government. The Covid-19 pandemic has added further delay, but the updating of the strategy is now in its final stages. I am also working on a finance plan for 2021. We have sought and received representations from most of the stakeholders involved and we hope to complete the plan in December, for publication early in 2021.

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