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

As the House knows, this is the third year of the Action Plan for Jobs. The thinking behind it was that employment was a crisis of such dimensions that it needed all of Government to respond. It was not a question of one Department or one set of agencies as it was really a challenge for the entire Government. The thinking behind it was also to get every single Department to look at what could be done to improve the environment for enterprise and job creation, and every Department and 46 agencies have contributed proposals to be delivered.

The other unique feature is that each of these actions that are committed to by Departments are benchmarked to be delivered in a particular quarter, and they are overseen from the Taoiseach's office, so there is a momentum to deliver on time to the targets committed. By and large, we have delivered more than 90% of the targets on time.

The third feature that is of interest to Members is that we have openly embraced industry as partners in the process. We have brought in six industrial partners which are now helping to implement particular areas of the plan. In addition, we have had a sort of rolling programme of discussion with enterprise as to what needs to be done each year, so that, every year, we seek to refresh the agenda based on the feedback we are getting from players in the workplace.

In the eight minutes available to me, I want to signal a lot of what is in it-----