Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton. The contributions of spokespersons will be eight minutes and all other Senators five minutes. As it is Seachtain na Gaeilge, Minister, ar aghaidh leat.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I do not think I will speak in Irish for the duration, I am afraid. I would have to have had advance notice.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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Níl an Ghaeilge chomh flúirseach agam ach oiread. Tá beagáinín agam.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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On a point of order, do I get a chance to respond to the matters raised?

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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Yes.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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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-----

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister is not confined to eight minutes, like the other speakers. If the Minister goes over 30 minutes, I will call him.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Very good. I will just give a rough rundown on what the action plan is. There are core elements that will remain constant from year to year. These are built around issues like competitiveness, which includes skills, research and development, cost structures, red tape and those sorts of areas. There is also the issue of Pathways to Work, which has been developed by the Ministers, Deputy Joan Burton and Deputy Ruairí Quinn, but is still key to the Action Plan for Jobs. It concerns how we make sure there is a fair shareout of job opportunities among those who do not have work.

Another standard piece each year has been access to finance, which has been a recurring difficulty for enterprise in recent years. We then have dedicated sections on Irish-owned companies which are exporting and on our attraction of foreign direct investment into the country, and these are also standard pieces. We also look at areas like procurement, which is an opportunity that many people recognise as one that needs to be developed. We then have sectoral pieces, which have been a feature each year, in particular in the areas of tourism, food, retail, the green economy and ICT. These are areas where we clearly believe we have a competitive advantage and we can build sustainable sectors for the future.

Another feature that was introduced last year is what we would call disruptive reforms. These are, if one likes, areas where we can take initiatives that we believe will have an impact across a wide range of sectors and are not defined by particular sectors. One example is ICT skills. It is very clear that ICT skills are driving change, not just in the sector that is described as ICT but in virtually every sector of the economy, where using the power of information technology to gather and analyse information and applying that is redefining the sort of business models that succeed. Therefore, we have committed to become the best provider of skills in Europe by increasing the proportion of ICT skills that are delivered from the Irish education system. Two years ago, this was at just 45%, and we want to bring that to 75% by 2018, so there is very significant expansion in this area. We have identified similar key areas that apply across sectors, such as trading online, driving energy efficiency and the introduction of a health innovation hub. The idea is to involve not only our good industry and our good research centres but our health system, so it can become a test bed for technologies that are emerging and, from there, become opportunities for us to build an export market on the back of test-bedded experience in the Irish medical system.

The areas we have highlighted this year as areas where we are focusing particular initiatives are threefold. One is entrepreneurship, the second is what we call winning abroad and the third is manufacturing. In the case of entrepreneurship, as the House probably knows, Mr. Sean O'Sullivan conducted an entrepreneurship forum for us during the course of last year and his work was presented to me earlier this year. We are now going to develop our first policy statement. As part of that, this year we are going to roll out the 31 local enterprise offices, which are a new approach to supporting local enterprise. What is new is that we have a centre of excellence in Enterprise Ireland so its work will be co-ordinated across the 31 bodies involved.

Enterprise Ireland will be developing best practice in terms of mentoring standards and new initiatives that can drive entrepreneurship and bring new thinking into the system. The provision of micro-finance funding is an example of an initiative we have driven in this area.

The third new element is that we are consciously embracing local authorities as an agent for enterprise development within their own areas. The resources we had in the county enterprise boards and an additional 50 staff from the business service units of the local authorities will be merged into one entity. In addition, we are recruiting graduates to assist in enterprise promotion. This will be a first-stop shop for micro-business and entrepreneurship, with a seamless connection back into Enterprise Ireland. It is about bringing small business and entrepreneurship development into the centre of public policy making. We have great ambition for this initiative.

In addition, this year we will establish a youth entrepreneurship fund. This idea came from members across the committees, the view being that there is a number of under-represented cohorts in entrepreneurship, including women, young people and non-Irish people. We are confident we can do better in all three of these areas. The approach of using a competition is helpful in this regard. We have employed it very successfully in the past two years in respect of business start-ups by women. The scheme was multiple times oversubscribed, in response to which we trebled the allocation. This is an area where we can do a great deal of work and it will be a strong theme this year.

The second issue I wish to highlight is winning business abroad. We have put additional feet on the ground in key markets, including 20 additional people for Enterprise Ireland's overseas team and 35 new staff for IDA Ireland. The idea is to build in emerging and new markets where we see an opportunity for either inward investment or new sales. We have enjoyed considerable success in this regard, with both IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland having record years in the past 12 months and creating nearly 12,000 net additional jobs between them. This represented a very significant advance on previous years. It is an area that is working and it warrants additional resources and additional targets to bolster it.

The third area to single out is manufacturing. It is a sector that has been neglected, but the changes that are happening mean it presents an opportunity Ireland should seek to seize. We have become more competitive in this area and trends in manufacturing suggest that areas where we have a competitive advantage will play strongly. For example, the merging of traditional products with ICT - smart products, smart medical devices, connected health and so on - is an area where Ireland ought to be carving out a competitive edge. The past 12 months have been encouraging in respect of manufacturing and we need to build on that. This year, we will identify 200 businesses out of our existing base of manufacturing companies which we believe can sustain a step up. To support that, one of the initiatives we have taken is the launch, earlier this week, of a development capital fund. Enterprise Ireland has put up €25 million for that fund, which is leveraged up with private sector investment. For the first €50 million given, we have €225 million when it is leveraged up. This represents a very significant fund to back traditional businesses that have the capacity to go global. There is a real opportunity in manufacturing and we need to tap into it.

Another issue of interest is the question of how well the action plan is performing, which has been the focus of a great deal of comment. This Government set itself two targets in this area. One was to become the best small country in which to do business and the other was to create a net 100,000 jobs by 2016. In the past 12 months, as we know from the statistics published last week, net job creation was 61,000 and we had a fifth consecutive quarter of net job creation. If we take it since the turning point on employment - obviously, there was some decline before that - net employment has grown by 72,000. We are past the half-way mark in respect of our target and I am confident we will reach it. In terms of our efforts to support and facilitate entrepreneurship, Forbes has indicated its view that we are indeed the best place in the world to do business. In terms of the world competitiveness rankings, we have gone from 24th to 17th, while the rankings for the best place to start a business put us tenth or thereabouts. We are showing signs of improvement, in other words, but there is more to be done.

One of the initiatives we are introducing this year, which follows from our discussions with the OECD, is to look at additional impact indicators which could help to bring more focus into some of the areas in which we are working. We will, for example, look at whether we can develop a suite of impact indicators around entrepreneurship so that we can see not only whether we are rolling out programmes that are of interest and have a good take-up but also whether we are seeing their impact in key areas. We will be considering headline indicators that could improve the focus of our action plan and the feedback mechanisms we use.

Each year we seek to make the action plan a more forensic and effective document. This year we will see a very significant focus on skill as an area we need to develop. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, recently published the review of apprenticeship. Next month SOLAS will publish its strategy for the successor to FÁS. At a time when employment growth is starting to recover, we will be looking at existing training models to see whether they can contribute more. Many people in Europe are looking to Germany as a country which weathered the recession particularly well. Its apprenticeship and traineeship models are very much routed in its culture and have certainly helped to make the country competitive globally, particularly in terms of its mittelstandcompanies, which are family-owned, engineering-type businesses. There are lessons for Ireland in that. The review of apprenticeships and SOLAS's strategic plan will be watched with considerable interest because they will throw up opportunities for some of our sectors to strengthen their own training pipeline. We have seen that one of the consequences of the recession was a decline in the commitment to training in some sectors, which is something we need to rectify.

I hope I have given Members a flavour of what we are about and I now look forward to their contributions. I prefer to hear Members' views rather than repeating what they can read in the document.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister will have ten minutes to respond at the end of the debate. I now call the first speaker. In the spirit of Seachtain na Gaeilge, tá ocht nóiméid ag Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill.

Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire, atá anseo chun díospóireacht a dhéanamh linn ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo. Tá cúrsaí fostaíochta i ngeilleagar na tíre seo fíorthábhachtach dúinn go léir.

The area of job creation and employment is critical to Ireland's recovery. I welcome the Minister to the House for this discussion on the Action Plan for Jobs and the opportunity to review where we are in this regard. An economy can only benefit all of its people if there are people in employment to contribute to the State's coffers and thereby sustain the society. This country has gone through an exceptionally difficult time, with many people losing their jobs. Many families, whether two-job families or one-job families, were affected. Large numbers were left on the live register as a result of economic collapse, particularly in the construction sector and all that went with that.

I acknowledge the work the Government and Minister have done to try to reverse some of these difficulties. Every effort to create additional jobs must be supported by the Government and Opposition. None the less, words are generally of little comfort to those who find themselves in financial distress as a result of having lost a job. While I acknowledge that almost 30,000 people left the live register in the past year, I understand 86,000 people were encouraged to join activation schemes.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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That is the total figure, which is not new and amounts to approximately 2,000 more than in the previous year. The increase in employment is not explained by the number of people moving to schemes.

Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)
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I acknowledge that. The live register figures also show that people are leaving the country. In 2012 and 2013, for example, approximately 200 people left the country every day. On a national radio programme at breakfast time this morning, a person in Canada spoke of the number of Irish people who are setting down roots in Calgary and elsewhere in Canada where new GAA clubs are being established. While GAA clubs are flourishing in other parts of the world, I regret that in my part of the world we are finding it extremely difficult to keep clubs going because young people are leaving as a result of the absence of employment. The figures on employment do not necessarily translate into people gaining employment, which raises other questions.

Time is short but I would like to briefly raise a number of issues. Youth unemployment is the most serious problem facing the country. In the past five years, more than 250,000 aged between 15 and 29 years or one in five persons in this age cohort have left the country. Emigration is ripping the soul out of Ireland and destroying future recovery. Something must be done to tackle youth unemployment. While I acknowledge the work being done by the Government in other areas, it is not tackling this issue. There has been a strong focus on IDA supported companies, foreign direct investment and the multinational sector but regional development has been ignored by the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and the Department.

Employment is not being created in the regions. The Minister's replies to parliamentary questions show that most new jobs have been created in major urban hubs, which also benefit from most site visits. The north west and other rural areas are in decline and have been left with little hope for the future. Young people who cannot secure a job locally, for example, in teaching, are being forced to move abroad. This is a sad development, which tears at the heart of communities. Every family in my local area of north-west Donegal has experienced migration, whether to Dublin, Toronto or Sydney. People in the regions lack opportunities.

I plead with the Minister to discuss this issue with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. The lack of infrastructure in the regions is not an excuse. It is disgraceful that the Government has allowed €13.5 million in European Union funding for rural broadband services to be returned. When I question the IDA or Enterprise Ireland about employment, officials inform me that broadband facilities are not available in certain rural areas. I am aware that responsibility for the failure to drawn down the EU funds for rural broadband services rests with the Departments of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and Agriculture, Food and the Marine. A grave injustice was done to rural communities when this funding was lost.

Other areas which I could discuss include the need to upskill the workforce, the role of the information and communications technology sector and the need to adapt educational programmes for the future. I ask the Minister to outline what work is being done in this regard by his Department and the Department of Education and Skills. The Minister for Education and Skills discussed this issue in the House recently and I am aware that plans are in place in this regard. We need to know what will be the position in five, ten or 15 years because the children currently at school need to be informed about what career opportunities may become available to them. Links are needed between the education system and industry.

A recent OECD report highlighted the difficulties small and medium-sized enterprises are experiencing in securing funding. Financial institutions are not lending and choosing instead to roll over pre-approved loans and reclassifying this money as new approvals. I understand that 66% of funding that had been pre-approved for companies has been rolled over. State agencies and services, including the Leader programmes, Údarás na Gaeltachta and the county enterprise boards, are providing grant aid to small and medium-sized enterprises. Time and again, I have encountered circumstances where people who have secured funding from these sources to start a small business have been refused co-funding by the banks. Notwithstanding that the Credit Review Office is doing its best, the banks must be taken to task by the Minister because they are not lending. If they are not prepared to lend, the State must provide loan facilities to enterprises, provided they can demonstrate an ability to repay the loans. Interest free loans or some other type of loan must be provided to enterprises. I understand that approximately 50% of the new jobs in the past year were created by people who are self-employed. The Government must help people to help themselves, for example, in cases where they cannot secure a bank loan of €5,000 or €10,000.

Caít Keane (Fine Gael)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. Aontaím leis an Leas-Chathaoirleach gur cheart dúinn cúpla focal Gaeilge a úsáid, agus cúrsaí jabanna á bplé againn, mar gheall go bhfuil Seachtain na Gaeilge ar siúl faoi láthair. Ba chóir dúinn gach dícheall a dhéanamh jabanna a chur ar fáil sa Ghaeltacht ionas go bhfanfaidh daoine sna ceantracha sin. Tá a fhios againn go bhfuil an tAire, an Teachta Rabbitte, ag obair go dian. Tá plean leagtha amach aige chun an Idirlíon agus an broadband a chur isteach i ngach tigh. Is ábhar é sin do lá eile. B'fhéidir go gcuirfidh mé é ar an gclár am éigin eile.

I welcome the Minister. I am pleased to speak on the Action Plan for Jobs because for the past year or two the Minister has had positive news on jobs. Having been in a sad place, we have now moved on. Just last week, the Government launched the Action Plan for Jobs 2014, which lists more than 380 specific actions to help create new jobs. This is the third annual instalment in the Government's plan to build a sustainable and growing economy and fulfil the mandate on which it was elected. The process has been difficult and I compliment the Minister on the work he has done in this regard. While he recognises that he has much more to do, he is on the right road, as the Government has demonstrated.

As the Minister noted, under the next phase of the Action Plan for Jobs, the Government has set a target of creating 90,000 new jobs, including 40,000 manufacturing jobs, 10,000 jobs related to foreign direct investment and 30,000 indigenous export focused jobs. The plan aims to build on the significant progress made in creating jobs since the first action plan was launched in February 2012, with 60,000 new jobs added in the year to September 2013.

According to live register figures - the Senator opposite focused on such figures - the rate of unemployment has decreased over 20 consecutive months from 15.1% in February 2012 to 12% last month. Those figures were not produced by me, the Minister or the Government, they come from an independent source, namely, the CSO. The economist, Mr. Conall Mac Coille, from Davy Research has predicted, in the context of the decrease in unemployment from its peak in February 2012, that if the pace of improvement is maintained, the rate will fall below 10% by the end of 2015. In light of what the Minister has done to date, we are well on the road towards achieving that rate. I compliment the Minister on the work he has done in this regard. This morning it was announced that the numbers on the live registered declined by a further 2,500 last month. The average reduction per month has been 3,000. This means the numbers of those on the live register have fallen below 400,000 for the first time since May 2009. The figures speak for themselves.

A great deal needs to be done in the area of construction. The Government accepts that 100,000 of those who are unemployed worked in the construction industry and that approximately two thirds of those on dole queues are long-term unemployed. We also must work on the fact that we have one of the highest percentages of households, 20%, in which there is no person in employment. That is a serious problem and the Government's aim is to ensure assistance will be provided to every household. Extensive measures have been put in place to counter the deficit in employment in the construction Industry. The outlook and strategic plan on the construction industry was commissioned and implemented last year by the Minister, Deputy Bruton, as part of the previous Action Plans for Jobs. It sets out an optimum scenario of sustainable output from the construction industry. There is a need for sustainable development in order that we might avoid the type of unplanned and unmonitored bubbles which proved to be our downfall, both in the construction industry and economically. There can be no return to a situation where the rate of construction was hugely inflated and reached 25% of GNP. We have gone from one extreme to the other and we must get back on track in the context of construction. We must ensure, therefore, that construction returns to a viable and sustainable level. I refer, in that regard, to the figure of 12% set out in the plan.

Measures such as the home renovation incentive were put in place to boost employment in the construction industry. Those measures are working and have resulted in three consecutive quarters of annual growth in construction employment. We recognise, however, that this level of activity within the industry must be increased. The Minister has outlined on many occasions the steps he is taking in this regard. I agree with the previous speaker in that the banks must also play their part. The Government is not crowing about its achievements. It cannot afford to do so because we are not yet out of the woods. Everyone in government recognises that. The Minister is not allowing momentum to slacken and we must continue to drive forward and create more jobs. I hope I am correct in stating that if we replicate in the next two years what we have done in the past two, we will be well on our way.

In the new Action Plan for Jobs there is emphasis on three broad issues, namely, the importance of entrepreneurship; the previous success of agencies such as IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland in increasing the numbers in employment by 20,000 and in harnessing the potential of manufacturing; and competitiveness. Ireland's competitiveness has improved steadily. The Minister quoted figures from the International Institute for Management Development, IMD, which indicate that Ireland has risen from 24th to 17th in the context of its competitiveness ranking. We must continue to move forward in this regard. The new action plan will involve a new system of quarterly reporting to the Cabinet committee on competitiveness, which is welcome, measures on skills, including 6,000 places on MOMENTUM - perhaps the Minister might comment on these when replying - and reduced costs for businesses through the roll-out of the reformed workplace relations structures. All these initiatives will be of assistance in facilitating the creation of employment. Everyone is aware of the impact the reduction of VAT to 9% in respect of the tourism sector had in the context of boosting the number of tourists coming here and also the level of employment in the sector. This reduction was a factor in the creation of in excess of 22,000 jobs.

SMEs are extremely important to this country's economy, particularly as over 90% of those in employment work for such companies. I have three children and they are all self-employed in their own SMEs. Under the action plan, there will now be new non-bank sources of lending for SMEs. This will be in addition to the €2 billion that is already available. Perhaps the Minister will comment on the announcement he made last week in respect of €70 million being provided to the development capital scheme, which is designed to support Irish companies targeting job creation and the export market.

The Minister referred to women in the technology sector. I agree with him that not enough women work in this sector. Women are well capable of doing so and there is a need to promote their involvement. The Minister has targeted this area in the past and there was a good level of uptake in respect of the initiatives he put in place. Two of my daughters work in an institute of technology, so I was very interested in hearing what the Minister had to say in respect of this matter. Parents and teachers' promotion of traditional career paths for girls is a decisive factor in influencing their university and career choices. We must ensure women are influenced in making the choice in this regard. We must tackle stereotypes and sexist promotions early on to promote equal representation and opportunity in this booming industry, in other industries and also in politics.

It is clear the action plan process is working. Where previously we were shedding 1,600 jobs per week, we are now adding 1,200 every week. A study published by the intelligence unit of The Economistindicates that, in the context of investment funds, Ireland is now the European domicile of choice among global asset managers. according to the new research. Some 71% of global asset managers who participated in this comprehensive study said they would choose Ireland as one of their top three European fund domiciles. The value of Irish domiciled funds is estimated at €1.3 trillion and the funds industry accounts for more than 12,000 jobs in Ireland. We beat countries such as Luxembourg and Germany to reach top spot. I congratulate the Minister on his drive and leadership in respect of this matter. The funds to which I refer were not attracted here by accident. The process in this regard was driven by the Minister. Ireland is now the leader in Europe in this area. It is of the utmost importance that we should continue to invest in these diverse industries to which I have referred to sustain our reputation and the growth in employment.

Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister and join others in congratulating him on the immense progress that has been made. As he observed, however, there is still an awfully long way to go and a brick-by-brick approach will be necessary.

The Minister for Finance came before the House last evening and I asked him about capital gains tax, CGT. I am an entrepreneur and I often speak to young entrepreneurs. When they ask me for advice, I always inform them that once they start a business, they must know when they will exit it. As we all know, the exit here is CGT at a rate of 33%. I informed the Minister for Finance that I have no problem with this rate of CGT but surely there should be a different rate for someone who is working for the country, who has a great idea, who is going to start a business and who is going to create employment and increase the Government's income tax take as a result.

There is an increasing level of concern among Members of the Oireachtas with regard to rural Ireland. Such concern appears to be growing weekly. This has led me to ponder the position with regard to the tax rates which apply in rural areas. Enterprise Ireland has always provided additional grant aid to companies which locate their operations outside urban areas. I ask the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to give even greater consideration to how foreign direct investment might be further incentivised in order that companies might be encouraged to locate their operations outside these areas.

I warmly welcome the news from the IMD that Ireland is ranked 17th in the world in terms of its competitiveness.

As an exporter of 80% of produce, we find it continuously difficult to be competitive, in my case, with European competitors. The Irish Sea is between us and Europe but competitors are on the mainland. We have no problem being competitive in North America with fellow Europeans but I cannot stress how every single brick of assistance that can be given to make us competitive is welcomed and can be used to gain traction and sales.

We need help in Ireland to increase our skills base with the web but I am only barely able to articulate this because I only know a little bit about it. Nevertheless, we believe in it. I will visit a similar company to mine in London next week but it started three years ago, whereas I started 20 years ago. It only sells on the web and in England. It is turning over £50 million after three years just on the web. I have recently received investment from the Carlyle group, which owns the company in question, and that is why I am lucky enough to be introduced to it. I have learned much already. The Minister should think about Irish companies selling on the web, as I am concerned about our lack of knowledge. If my company has some Google AdWords, for example, it costs €1.50 per €40 sale in Ireland. It would cost €20 for the AdWords in England as an Irish company trying to make the same sale. Our information technology people must be upskilled quickly so we can get on this platform. Whether we like it or not, on-line selling and buying is here to stay. There is also the tax intake to account for. If I am buying a dress, for example, I may be able to find it cheaper in England or France, which would affect tax. Irish companies must be upskilled so that we can get on the stage in Europe and grab the web shopper. That is the way it is going in business.

I was delighted to hear of the €5 million built heritage job scheme and I ask the Government to add a zero to the €5 million. I had an Australian visitor from Woolworths supermarket, which has done substantial business with us in the past year and I hope will do much more. She flew here on Monday and we had meetings Monday evening and yesterday, when we finished at lunchtime. She and a colleague asked what heritage sites could be visited in Kildare. That is not tourism but rather a business visit. We all know the incredible strength in having the heritage that England has, and it also has the National Trust. The Minister knows he can also create wonderful jobs in this respect. Perhaps he can join the dots with the Minister responsible for arts and heritage, as this is a "no-brainer". If we build up our heritage and restore it forever for future generations we can create jobs and skills now, and further jobs will attach to those heritage sites.

Lorraine Higgins (Labour)
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I welcome the Minister to the House to hear our views on the Action Plan for Jobs recently announced. I commend the Minister and the Government for all the hard work done in creating jobs in very difficult times. There is no doubt that we have come back from a very difficult place, bringing the country back from the brink and into a zone where we can see stability and recovery.

Before beginning I will outline where we came from and where we are now. In March 2011, we had 14.7% of the population on the live register, with 7,000 jobs being lost every month. Our economic growth was 2.5% in deficit and our consumer confidence was low as a consequence our international reputation taking a battering. All of this brought much damage to the Irish economy and to families and communities throughout the country. Thanks to the policies pursued by the Government, the ship is now being turned and all the indicators are very positive. There were 61,000 jobs created last year and it is fair to say we are moving in the right direction. The live register numbers have fallen for the 19th month in a row, with the standardised unemployment rate down to 12.1%. Economic growth has reached 1.7%, which is up from a deficit three years ago. Consumer confidence has also increased steadily, as have overseas visits to Ireland, the rate of which is almost four times what it was in 2011. We can see the enormous strides that have been made in such a short time in Government. There is no doubt that the Government and Ministers deserve praise for that.

The Action Plan for Jobs announced by the Government is full of well thought out measures which will do even more to create jobs. The rolling out of 31 local enterprise offices and additional funding to support start-ups and expansions, including a new youth entrepreneurship fund, will help drive entrepreneurial activity throughout the country in urban and rural heartlands alike. The development of a clear strategy with medium term actions for entrepreneurship through a national entrepreneurship policy statement is key to creating the conditions for job creation. I particularly welcome the framework put in place to provide necessary supports for new entrepreneurs opening businesses. The framework includes tax-based support schemes, mentoring, peer learning and knowledge sharing to develop entrepreneurial capacity. There is no doubt these funds have been allocated to inspire and encourage untapped potential among groups, including youth and graduate entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs - as mentioned in the opening statement - immigrant entrepreneurs and those on a regional level. This will help groups that traditionally struggle to open a business, so I commend the Minister for demonstrating such foresight.

I welcome the announcement of a regionally based public competition to find the best entrepreneur in Ireland, with a €2 million total prize fund along with the entrepreneurial phD programme to train Science Foundation Ireland statements to launch businesses. As I embark on a European election campaign, I look forward to getting out there and meeting entrepreneurs in the weeks and months ahead to discuss any needs, potential gaps in Government assistance or policy and see how policies are working on the ground towards success. There is no reason Ireland cannot be up there among the most entrepreneurial nations in the world and be acknowledged as a world-class environment in which to start and grow business. The measures announced in the Action Plan for Jobs represents a significant step in the right direction.

There are two caveats that would add greatly to our job creation ideas from the past number of years. We must have proper banking competition in the country and if the Government is not mindful of setting up a new bank, the only way we can achieve real results is to encourage new institutions to set up. We have the same old banks with their legacies, and the crux is that all the banks are retail banks. There is no properly focused business bank but it is high time for one to enter the market. We need to ensure the banks are financing cash flow businesses and that officials get proper training on the consideration of business plans so that viable examples are approved for finance. We need to move away from the bricks and mortar security sought in the past. We are currently letting go the opportunity to finance some Irish businesses and entrepreneurs; if we do not correct that trend and take remedial action, we will face paralysis. We must avoid that so as to compliment all the policies pursued by the Government.

One way to tackle the issue is to grant new banking licences similar to the old ICC and ACC banks set up a number of decades ago. These were set up to provide targeted lending for agriculture and small business. The funds from KfW in Germany should not go to the pillar banks of Bank of Ireland and AIB and if we are really committed to doing all we can for small and medium enterprises, we must take inspiration from what has been done in the UK. The UK Government, through its central bank, granted a banking licence for Metro Bank, which targets almost half of its lending at the small and medium enterprise sector and commercial enterprises. That is the kind of statistic I want to see Ireland boast of.

Job creation cannot solely be about the number of jobs created. It should also be about the quality of those jobs. I commend colleagues in the Labour Party, including Deputies John Lyons, Gerald Nash, Ciara Conway and Derek Nolan, as well as Labour Youth and its chairperson, Ciarán Garrett, who are campaigning steadily at the moment to end zero-hour contracts. It is something I have come across quite a bit recently in my constituency clinics. As someone who had worked in employment law in the Law Library, I am astounded by the fact that these are on the rise. The nature of these contracts makes it almost impossible for workers to sustain a decent standard of living. They have no knowledge of the number of hours they will work every week or of how much money they will earn at the end of it. The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 provides for compensation for workers who are on these contracts where they do not receive any hours, but such compensation is clearly insufficient. The problem must be ameliorated to ensure we have good quality jobs that enable workers to have a decent standard of living. It is incumbent on us as a Government to lead the charge and to show real leadership on this issue. It would save the State money if people were on a sufficient, set number of hours of work as there would be less dependence on supplementary social welfare allowances or income support. I urge the Minister to consider doing something proactive in this regard.

The Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, remarked that as Ireland moves out of the bailout, we must articulate a longer-term vision of the future. Our medium-term economic strategy sets out the objective of achieving full employment by 2020, and this is certainly complemented by Action Plan for Jobs. The clear focus across the whole of the Government has enabled us to exit the bailout and must now be brought to bear on the next target, which is to replace the jobs we have lost, implement Action Plan for Jobs and achieve full and sustainable employment. Action Plan for Jobs demonstrates the Government's commitment to job creation, and the employment indicators endorse our job creation strategy. Action Plan for Jobs will undoubtedly help more people return to work. We must consider the banking situation to encourage and help more small and medium enterprises into the market with access to finance as has been done in England with Metro Bank. Indeed, we should also look at the situation with zero-hour contracts. I am committed to the view that not just any old job will do. It is something I ask the Minister to bear in mind.

Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)
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I call Senator Barrett. I apologise for the false start earlier.

Sean Barrett (Independent)
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Ná habair é. I met a real entrepreneur when Senator Mary Ann O'Brien came over to tell me about that.

I welcome the Minister to the House. The 61,000 figure is excellent news which shows how the economy has been restoring its competitiveness in the past three or four years. The increase in full-time employment is 3.9%, comprised of an increase in the private sector of 4.5% and a public sector reduction of 1.5%. Unemployment is down by 41,000. It was interesting to read Colm McCarthy's article on Sunday to the effect that the sources of the growth between 2011 and 2013 were 12.8% in accommodation and hospitality while professional, scientific and technical employment was up by 19.7%. We still have a problem. The briefing document which the Oireachtas service helpfully prepared for us shows that up to 2013, the cumulative decline in youth employment was almost 60%. This represents a drop from 357,000 employed youth in summer 2007 to 148,000 at the beginning of 2013. They do not see that revising, unfortunately.

As Senator Lorraine Higgins has just been saying, we must tackle the bank problem. We have an economy trying to operate without banks or with impaired banks. It has taken far too long. The crisis is now going on for six years. Perhaps, we should look at inducements for different types of banks to enter the market. The Minister for Finance was with us last night in this series and he might be thinking along those lines. Property-based banks like we have had, which are seriously impaired, cannot fuel the growth the Minister seeks and that we all support. I say the same about the accountancy firms who gave us accounts in respect of those banks, which were supposed to be true and accurate. We ended up having to invest €64 billion of public money in them. Not to have a reputation for reliable accountants is a serious obstacle to people like the Minister when they are trying to develop this country. I remain to be convinced that the construction industry would not do the same all over again, unfortunately.

I am not so sure the sheltered section of the economy, which the Minister discusses in Action Plan for Jobs, has changed its colours either. It is still wedded to restrictive practices. I was thinking of the Minister's career in economics as he went from UCD to Oxford to the ESRI. I would hope Professor Brendan Walsh, who is in charge of financial regulation, will be able to produce a system of accounting that does verify what is happening. Professor Bent Flyvbjerg at Oxford has set out his fears about large projects such as the Irish public capital programme which we used to boast was twice as large as any other one in the EU. That means bigger cost overruns. Professor Bent Flyvbjerg work shows that large projects lead to large cost overruns. There seemed to be no liability on people. In fact, they were rewarded. The larger the cost overrun, the larger the fees for the people who engaged in those projects. Siren calls that we need to have stimulus packages based on the public capital programme carry a warning light. The export-led growth the Minister has been pursuing is much more reliable.

On the sheltered sectors, Paul Gorecki of the ESRI has been critical of some of the recent policies. The unpicking by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport of the decision to deregulate the taxi business by placing obstacles in front of new entrants has probably cost approximately 5,000 jobs. Some, admittedly, were lost during the recession. We always listen to the incumbents who do not like new entrants. New entrants are the people who keep incumbents efficient and honest in any sector. The Competition Authority is also critical of the proposal to put only 10% of bus routes to competitive tender in 2016. They have been preventing competition in that sector since 1932. It has taken 84 years to get competition for 10% of bus routes. At that rate of progress, it will be 840 years before one gets a competitive bus business.

Members on all sides of the House supported the measure in the early days of the troika to allow new doctors to compete for the General Medical Service. The Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Alex White, spoke about it subsequently. I do not think there have even been 100. The local General Medical Service doctor remains a local monopolist. The legislative provisions were very good. In determining an application, the HSE is not to consider the viability of the applicant or the effect on the viability of anyone else in the business either. The medical profession, which is heavily criticised in the troika reports for high costs, seems to have succeeded again in preventing a measure which all sides of the House wanted to see introduced to improve our competitiveness.

I agree with much of the criticism of the document that was made on George Lee's programme by Sheila Killian of the University of Limerick and Dr. Moira Creedon of the IMI. It tends to lack numbers, fails to evaluate policies and never seems to want to shut down any policy. It is agency intensive. There are 102 quangos mentioned. Action 109 is to review the regulatory framework for airport charges. What happened to the regulatory framework for airport charges? The regulator, Cathal Guiomard, did not recommend an increase. The previous Government imposed a 41% increase. I hope we are not blaming the regulator. The practice by which Ministers can overrule regulators is what caused the increase.

I mentioned meeting Senator Mary Ann O'Brien as an entrepreneur and I also met Mr. Michael O'Leary of Ryanair recently. He said there will be 1 million extra passengers because the Government accepted his point that the travel tax was a barrier to people visiting this island.

The Minister is doing a lot of worthwhile and praiseworthy things but we still need to look at how many things went wrong in 2008 and how we can prevent a recurrence. I commend the Minister on commissioning the Competition Authority's report on port charges. It said that some of the leases in Dublin Port are far too long and effectively prevent competition. As we export 85% of our goods by sea, competition within ports is important.

The movement of Forfás into the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is also crucial because we need more ideas in this area, given its vital national importance.

Elementary economic rules were broken in setting up Irish Water. We tried to get amendments accepted in the House in order that Irish Water would be subject to the Competition Authority and proper capital investment appraisals with a local democracy element would be involved. The Seanad will undoubtedly assist the Minister in all these endeavours, but some old practices are still around in some parts of Government Buildings. I wish the Minister every success in trying to counteract those because we do not want to make the same mistakes again.

The figure of 61,000 additional jobs is most impressive and I congratulate everyone concerned with it. We have so much more to do, however, and practices that predate 2008 will not help. Perhaps one of the problems is the ban on recruitment because the public servants who were there when the economy crashed have had an extra six years. If new economists were being recruited and coming in, they might create better ideas for what the Minister called disruptive innovation. We need to have disruptive innovation in policy discussions. I thank the Minister for attending the House.

Michael Mullins (Fine Gael)
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I join in welcoming the Minister and compliment him on driving Action Plan for Jobs. It builds upon the action plan that was put in place in 2012, following the change of government, to tackle the massive unemployment crisis when we were shedding 1,600 jobs per week. What marks this out from other plans is that is has a whole-of-Government approach and every Department is charged with playing its part in job creation. As Senator Barrett said, the plan is working in that 61,000 extra jobs have been created in the past year. The unemployment level has declined every month for the past 19 months. Last month, we had an unemployment rate of 12.3% compared with 15.1% in February 2012.

I welcome the ambitious target in the plan that by the end of this year we will be below the eurozone average for unemployment. By 2016, we will be below 10% and we aim to achieve full employment by 2020. It is courageous of the Government to aim at achieving those figures. The plan is geared to build a sustainable economy brick by brick to create the necessary job levels to tackle the current unacceptably high levels of unemployment.

As other speakers have said, this will be done by improving our competitiveness. It is welcome that Ireland's world rankings have improved from 24th to 17th in the competitive stakes, but we need to do much better. We also need to tackle over-regulation, planning issues, local authority costs, energy prices and many other elements that contribute to making us less competitive. We should continue to strongly support Irish and multinational exporting companies that have added 20,000 jobs in the past year.

I am pleased to see we are targeting sectors with the potential to create jobs, such as tourism, food and ICT. I welcome the many job announcements that have been made in the past year by major multinationals. Most of the jobs are located in Cork and Dublin, although some are thankfully in Galway city. Not enough jobs are going into the regions, however, and I have spoken to the Minister about this. Large towns like Ballinasloe have suffered significant job losses with the demise of traditional manufacturing, but not enough replacement jobs are spreading into the regions. I hope that situation will improve as more jobs come into our country.

I am pleased that there is a renewed emphasis on manufacturing in the jobs plan. There will be a regional enterprise strategy for each region. In addition, the IDA will build some advance facilities in areas where private enterprise is not meeting that need. We must concentrate on helping the domestic economy as part of the jobs action plan. The tourism and construction sectors have huge potential for job creation. The cutting of the VAT rate on tourism services, shortly after the Government took office, has created 22,000 jobs. It is vital this tax reduction is maintained. I know the Minister, Deputy Bruton, will be having discussions about this with the Minister for Finance.

The abolition of the travel tax in the previous budget has sparked a significant commitment by our airline carriers which hopefully will bring many additional tourists here. The success of the Gathering must be built upon and I am pleased to see that a new tourism strategy is soon to be published. We have a wonderful tourism product which will be further enhanced by the addition of the Wild Atlantic Way, a driving route from Donegal to west Cork, with attractions including beaches, golf courses and castles. In some sectors it is now being renamed as the ring road, but we do not mind what it is called. I am sure the Cathaoirleach will be happy to see additional tourists arriving into the west. We must be competitive and deliver value for money. I am greatly concerned that elements of the hospitality sector tend to exploit special events by hiking prices. This is something of which we need to be very conscious.

The construction sector has a key role to play in our recovery, but it is too small for the needs of a growing economy. Approximately 70 school projects will help, as will the energy retrofit plan for local authority houses. Tax relief in the budget for home improvements and extensions is beginning to have an impact. Many small builders are telling me the number of jobs they are pricing is significantly up on last year. It is to be hoped that many of those will come to fruition in the course of this summer.

The retail sector is referred to in the jobs programme but retailers are struggling in rural towns. Bad planning decisions that allowed large multiples to locate on the outskirts of towns have done untold damage to town centre businesses. In addition, rates and local authority charges are crippling small businesses, as are parking charges.

We should also be cognisant of the impact the black economy is having on small businesses. At the Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation yesterday, I spoke to the Minister about the need to resource local enterprise offices adequately, as they have the potential to kick-start many small enterprises.

I agree with Senator Mary Ann O'Brien who spoke about trading online and the amount of business that is now being done via the Internet. I welcome that 2,000 micro and small businesses will be targeted over the next two years to support them with online trading.

Significant supports are available to businesses, but not every business is aware of all those supports. I urge the Minister and the Department to do everything possible to communicate with the business sector about such supports in order that firms will have an opportunity to add additional staff numbers this year. That would help to drive our unemployment rate well below 10% by 2016.

David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister and the opportunity to debate the Action Plan on Jobs. Many Senators have been calling for a debate on jobs and unemployment and I am grateful to the Minister for coming before the House for this discussion.

There is no doubt that the live register figures have been encouraging in recent months. The jobs that have been gained are welcome because every job created is good news for the person who gets it, his or her family and the wider economy. We should, therefore, celebrate every job created and I certainly do so. Much of the increase in employment can be attributed not to Government policy but the resilience of local businesses and the entrepreneurs who are taking risks. The Minister will accept that businesses have found the past six years very difficult but they have endured. Many employers are now taking on new staff and expanding their businesses in response to new opportunities.

The employment figures have shown encouraging signs in the past 12 months, especially the past six months. As the Minister has acknowledged, however, we continue to face challenges. The scale of the challenge facing the State is significant and much work remains to be done. There is also evidence that jobs growth is polarised in a number of ways. For example, certain sectors are experiencing strong growth, while in other sectors growth has been limited. Moreover, part-time employment has increased significantly and most new jobs are low paid.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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That is not the case.

David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)
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The Minister will have an opportunity to respond.

The economy has experienced significant growth in areas in which employment is low paid and much less growth in areas where jobs are higher paid, which are what the economy needs. Polarisation is also evident in regional development, with some regions not performing as strongly as others. As the Minister is aware, the south east is not performing as it should and the region continues to face serious challenges, including massive unemployment.

Between 250,000 and 300,000 people are still unemployed nationally, of whom slightly more than 60% are long-term unemployed. We have lost a large number of people to emigration in the past six years and the problem persists. The labour market has lost 85,000 people aged under 35 years since the Government came to power. The emigration figures demonstrate that the vast majority of people want to work. People want to get off the live register and get a job to provide for themselves and their families. The problem is that there are still not enough jobs for those who want to work. The focus must continue to be on helping those seeking employment by creating the jobs they need.

I will focus briefly on the issue of regional disparities. I remind the Minister of the unacceptably high level of unemployment in the south east. In doing so, I also acknowledge the role he has played in bringing together stakeholders in the south east as part of the Government's efforts to create jobs in the region. While there has been some good news on that front, unfortunately the south east still has the highest unemployment rate of all the regions. Waterford city has unacceptable, if not dangerously high, levels of unemployment. This creates distinct problems, which must be addressed through a cohesive, multifaceted, joined-up approach by Government agencies and Departments. Job creation in Waterford city and county requires a suite of interventions from Government and non-government agencies.

Like the Minister, I am very proud of where I come from, namely, Waterford city. I am also proud of the people who live in the city and the efforts being made by entrepreneurs, the community and voluntary sector and civic leaders to create jobs and opportunities for people in the city and county. It is distressing for people in the region to see the live register figures. While the data nationally offer some good news and there has even been some good news for Waterford in terms of new jobs, the level of job creation in the region is insufficient. It is hard to be positive when one comes from a city with the highest unemployment rate in the country. As someone who represents the Waterford, I understand that people living in the city and county do not understand the reason unemployment in the area is so high. There is no reason Waterford should underperform to the extent that it does. It gives me no pleasure to say that as I would love more jobs to be created in the region. I celebrate every job that has been created in Waterford.

The Government can take a number of actions to support the regions. The Minister will be aware that as part of my work as a member of the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, I took a proactive decision to meet as many organisations as possible in the south east to discuss what the south east needs and what steps should be taken to assist the region. I met representatives of the chambers of commerce, the enterprise agencies, the community and voluntary sector, local government, the vocational education committees and the education and training boards. The joint committee published a strategy for the south east which recommended that a number of steps be taken. They include the establishment, as soon as possible, of a technological university. A level playing pitch is also required in respect of regional aid. The IDA must make greater efforts to assist the region, including through the establishment of a regional office with a regional director and strategy.

I accept that there is no panacea or magic bullet available for the south east. What we need is a strategy that joins up the work of all of the stakeholders and agencies. The interventions which everyone in the south east accepts are necessary must be delivered by the Government. This has not been done to the extent it should have been done. Some of the commitments in the programme for Government, including the undertaking to establish a technological university in the south east, have stalled. Meanwhile, the region continues to wait and underperform. I appeal to the Minister to continue the work he is doing to assist the south east region and Waterford city in creating jobs and to ensure we do our best for people in the region. I call on him to ensure the cross-party recommendations issued by the joint committee are implemented. We must demonstrate that the political system has done its best, not only to create more jobs nationally but also in regions that are underperforming.

Susan O'Keeffe (Labour)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. It is a good day when the unemployment figures fall below 400,000. The Minister will give credit to his Cabinet team for all the effort that has been made in this regard. However, given his responsibility for jobs, the Minister has done most of the legwork on this issue. This message has been echoed by previous speakers. We are in a great position to build on the aspirations and hopes of citizens. It is difficult for those without a job to understand that things are getting better. If one is looking for work but cannot find a job, it does not feel as if one has achieved anything.

Senator Ó Domhnaill's comment about tearing the heart out of rural Ireland is an evocative statement with which I do not agree. Rural Ireland is a strong place made up of strong people. The more one argues that its heart has been torn out, the more true this statement may become in people's minds because they may start to believe what they hear. I would much prefer to dwell on the strengths of rural areas, especially the west coast.

The launch of the Wild Atlantic Way is a live example of how we can create a spirit in a part of the country that has never been able to attract the level of investment enjoyed by Dublin, Cork and to some extent Galway. I would like the Action Plan for Jobs to contain a real recognition that the west coast is the lagging region. While I am aware that there are many economic terms to describe the position of the west, it has lagged behind other regions, not only in the lifetime of the Government. How can we address this issue and create a new feeling for the west coast? The Wild Atlantic Way was originally a terrific tourism idea, one which I continue to support.

Ironically, the Wild Atlantic Way was created as a tourist idea. It is a great one which I support. However, in a way it tells a different story in that it is a whole new way of presenting the west of Ireland in a new economic framework. We should use that as an example of how we can build on strengths. One looks at the secrets of the Wild Atlantic Way and one sees Ireland's teardrop, the last sunset and the wreckage of the Spanish Armada. In fact, what is valuable on the west coast is not foreign direct investment. There has not been as much of that, although what there has been is valuable. What is important is the heritage and culture. Senator Mary Ann O'Brien spoke about welcoming investment in cultural activity. I echo her comments and where she has put a zero on it, I would put two. That is the place where we have the capacity and potential to change the economic fortunes in the region. It is not just about small businesses. If we can realise our cultural potential, that also has the capacity to create jobs. When I look at the figures for investment in the area, I see that we are still scrabbling and arguing over thousands of euro here and there for the sorts of projects we need to inspire.

People come to Ireland from around the world because they know we have this amazing history and cultural richness that one does not find elsewhere. I had a meeting recently in Sligo which a couple of Dutch people attended. They said "but you were there all of you and you could think of so many people in your culture now that you admire and aspire towards". One said that in the Netherlands, they could think of three. It was a remarkable observation, which was not sought. We are almost neglectful of what is on our doorstep because we have such an abundance of it. While one must encourage foreign direct investment and all the various industries, not least the food industry, medical devices and information technology, we need a new idea for the west coast. It comes down to the potential for tourism which is closely linked with our culture, architectural heritage and coastline. These are the riches we have.

The Western Development Commission has been doing great work in terms of the creative edge and its own predictions for jobs. The body says that 11,000 people are already employed in creative industries in the west. That is a lot of people. While there are targets to grow those numbers, it may be a matter of the commission being enhanced. The body has not commissioned me to say this but it is central to that core with Fáilte Ireland. We need to stop the lagging for once and for all. The whole of Ireland would benefit. If we build up the Wild Atlantic Way and the ideas that go with it, it will benefit the rest of the country also. I am not here to say "Stop all other activity". That is also very important. However, having grown up away from the west coast, I see the difference when people think "We have always lagged". I would like to see a start to the end of that. There is potential. I see huge enthusiasm in the people of the west of Ireland. They are not having their hearts torn out. What the Senator said is not true. We have the capability to build up the strengths that are there. The Minister is positioned to drive it through lots of other organisations which are already doing some of the work.

Feargal Quinn (Independent)
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The Minister is welcome to the House. The Action Plan for Jobs is a welcome development and makes great reading. I wish to focus on a particular aspect of it which is the number of measures aimed at supporting entrepreneurship and creating jobs. One of the major barriers to creating jobs is upward-only rent reviews. I do not wish to sound like a bore on this matter, but the Seanad passed my Bill last week and it must now go to the Dáil. I hope it receives Government support. I quote from the Action Plan for Jobs action 345:

Highlight, through the retail representative bodies, the NAMA rent review guidelines and seek to ensure they are widely understood and utilised, where appropriate, including in cases where public sector bodies are the owners of premises.

Quite simply, the advice of one lawyer has changed everything. Máire Whelan, the Attorney General, has told the Government that banning upward only rent reviews would be unconstitutional. This is unsatisfactory as a High Court judge and known constitutional expert, Gerard Hogan, has already declared that upward-only rent clauses in contracts can be struck down in legislation.

How can the Government say it supports businesses and create strategies such as the Action Plan for Jobs when it will not address perhaps the principal factor affecting the survival of so many retailers? This is a sector which employs approximately 250,000 people, or 15% of those who are at work. We cannot simply say we cannot get over this constitutional technicality. It is a slap in the face for people who voted for the Government in the hope that it would address the issue and help their businesses. We must come together and support the Bill. We can do it quickly and implement something concrete that will help businesses greatly. It will mean we are protecting existing jobs and setting the conditions to create more jobs. I have got that off my chest and will put it behind me.

The Taoiseach has talked about Ireland being the best small country in the world to open a business, but we can set more concrete targets in the Action Plan for Jobs. We must learn from the best when it comes to making it as easy as possible to start a business. We should reduce red tape as much as possible. According to the World Bank's 2014 report on the cost of doing business, it takes four procedures and as long as ten days to start a business in Ireland. In Singapore, it takes just three procedures and two and a half days at a cost of approximately €400. New Zealand does even better. There, it takes just one procedure and half a day to start a business. All one has to do is register with the companies office online at a cost of less than €100. Has the Minister heard of the New Zealand example? Perhaps, we should include such a target in the next Action Plan for Jobs. We should set the bar higher. Is the Minister open to the proposal, which I would love to discuss with the Department? I am certain we will get to this stage in the future, but I would love to see some movement right now. What is Revenue doing in this respect?

My third point involves fewer regulations for SMEs compared to large businesses. I have discussed this before at the Joint Committee for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. An action which is not included in the Action Plan for Jobs but which I would like the Government to consider involves the issue of whether smaller businesses should be subject to the same legislation as large ones. I would like the Government to consider not imposing the same regulation on companies employing fewer than 50 people and perhaps putting fewer burdens on businesses of fewer than ten people. In France, the same rules do not apply to small and large businesses. We could do something here. Many regulations in France come into force only where a firm employs 50 workers or more. Should Google be subject to the same regulation as a small food company employing just five people? We can tailor those regulations.

Another issue is to get rid of redundant regulations to assist SMEs. One part of the Action Plan for Jobs makes reference to reduced costs through smart regulations. Could we move beyond smart regulation to get rid of some regulations completely to make it easier for business?

The UK introduced a system of "one in, one out" and then changed it to taking two older regulations out for every new regulation introduced. I think we can move on that. There are some very interesting figures in the UK in respect of that. I think it would be possible to do that. An issue that is related to this is the Red Tape Challenge in the UK which aims to listen to the public and business with the aim of scrapping or reducing as many as 6,500 regulations that affect people's everyday lives. It worked and 3,000 regulations will be done away with or at least reduced. There are steps we can take that will encourage businesses to set up and encourage small businesses to develop. I know the Minister's heart is in the right place and that he has said that it is not the Government's job to create jobs but to create the environment in which businesses can set up business.

Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister to the House. The action plan for jobs is beginning to show significant delivery but I must sound a note of caution about a number of things. Obviously, we very much welcome it and the interdepartmental, front-up approach across Government Departments in terms of jobs. The Taoiseach is talking about 2014 being the year for jobs, jobs and jobs and I certainly look forward to that. There have been a number of very positive initiatives. We are now taking a more long-term, holistic view of what we are doing with the scarce resources we have. The Gathering was certainly one initiative that was prepared and put into action over 18 to 24 months. Senator Mullins mentioned the Wild Atlantic Way. Again, it is a long-term approach to creating a product of international renown. We look at the likes of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. This is something we need to take advantage of. It is part of our natural resources and the figure of €10 million should be much higher. The figure for promoting this should be in the region of €50 million to €100 million. When one talks about the great walkways of the world and "must-sees", the Wild Atlantic Way should be at the top of that list.

I am concerned that what we are seeing is the classic example of urban and rural. When there is a lift, urban areas lift but rural areas tend to slop over. We need to ensure that we have a fair distribution of employment opportunities. We are all delighted to see the big names coming in and hundreds of jobs being created but I celebrate five, ten and 20 jobs as much as 200 and 500 jobs. Twenty, 50, 80 or 100 jobs make as much of a difference in small villages with a population of 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 as 1,000 jobs do in Cork or Dublin. We need to be very cognisant of the fact that we are a country of 32 counties, that there are more areas than the urban centres and that we need to facilitate not only the creation of jobs in rural Ireland in areas where we are strong and have products like tourism but the retention of jobs that are there. The buzzword can be new jobs but the buzzword should be jobs - both retention and creation.

Red tape has been reduced in business but, unfortunately, for every line of red tape that is being removed, we are getting another piece of white tape instead. There are too many regulations and requirements. We need to see the red tape removed. There is no reason why many things that would have taken weeks to deliver cannot be done within days and why things that would have taken days to deliver cannot be done within hours. The knowledge and information technology components and systems are there to ensure that we can reduce and eliminate red tape.

I always find it bizarre that when one goes to a little bar or coffee shop in the south of Spain, France or Italy, one can sit at a counter and have food but bars in the west of Ireland have a myriad of requirements relating to HACCP and every other kind of requirement. They must have three or four different types of toilets - men's, women's and disabled-friendly. Of course, that is important but if one wants to go to a toilet on the continent, it is the one toilet. That is just a very simple example of the difference between some of the European countries and this country yet we are all members of the EU and are told that all of these regulations and red tape result from our membership of the EU. We certainly seem to be the most compliant Europeans in Europe because if that is the case, why does it not happen in other countries? As Senator Quinn said, the challenge is to remove the red tape and that needs to be factored into the action plan for jobs because the cost of creating jobs is a factor. Governments do not create jobs but they can certainly deal with the significantly high cost of creating jobs, which in essence is red tape.

Overall, I always believe in finishing on a positive note. There is a lot happening. Unemployment is down to nearly 12%. It was much higher a couple of years ago. I believe the Minister and Taoiseach aim to lower it to 10% by 2016, which I think is very achievable. I even think they could bring it down to below that because jobs create more jobs. It does have a ripple effect. I wish the Minister well. I am encouraged that 2014 is the year of jobs and that the Government, Cabinet and various Ministers are front-loading in terms of creating jobs.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Conway and all the Senators who contributed to this debate. It will be very difficult to do justice to all the issues raised but I will deal with a few thematic ones. Senator Ó Domhnaill raised the issue of regional development. This is a really serious issue that we need to discuss. First, we should start from a factual basis. Every region in the country in the past 12 months has enjoyed employment growth. Contrary to what Deputy Cullinane said, some of the regions that enjoyed the greatest growth were the south east, which had over 15,000 net new jobs, and the Border regions, which had over 14,000 net new jobs. We are getting regional spread and that is a feature of the recovery. Of course, it is not driven predominantly by IDA projects. The regional spread is driven by the competitive advantage of regions. One must look at what the competitive advantages of regions are but in some cases, they will be tourism or food. These are natural sectors that have an absolute fit with the region. Too much of the debate about regional development in this country is conducted around how many site visits the IDA made to the region. The reality is that employment in foreign-owned companies represents 8% of total employment. A total of 92% of employment throughout the country is in other sectors. In some regions, particularly those that are more remote from urban centres, the proportion of foreign direct investment is probably down to around 4%. Yes, we need to have a debate about regional development but it should not be a debate about 4% of employment where we pretend that this is what we really have to solve. The 96% is far more important. One of the commitments we have made in this action plan is to develop a regional enterprise strategy, which we have never had in the past. The building blocks are being put in place. We will have our local enterprise offices which will each have their own plan. We will develop Enterprise Ireland and IDA plans for the regions. We can meld those into a strategy into which other stakeholders can have an input.

A successful regional strategy is often driven by entrepreneurs who decide to make a commitment to support their region, who step out from the pack and decide to create an environment which will encourage enterprise in his or her region. We want to create a framework to help such people to participate. It is not a case of all the State agencies sitting around a table, tugging at their beards and talking about things; we want to create ambition, to develop new tools and invite people to come in behind that. This is what I would like to see.

For example, the 200 companies chosen by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland to be given a step-up will be regionally based. We will examine what companies in each regions have the capacity to grow to the next level. As Senator Keane said, the developing capital fund is one of the instruments. The local enterprise offices will be used to organise competitions to encourage entrepreneurs, in particular, young people, women, the under-represented groups, who could step up to the plate. We are interested in developing regional innovation. Some of the funding for enterprise offices will be held back to stimulate new thinking about the region and its capability. That is how we need to think about regions, about competitive advantage, about the assets available and what tools can the State and the region adopt to drive that forward. Such a discussion has been absent from our discussion about regional progress.

I refer to Senator O'Keeffe's comments that different parts of the country have assets which have to be sweated, exploited and developed. We focus on the Atlantic Way which is a real asset but one cannot expect a company like Google to set up on the Atlantic Way. I am not criticising the Senator's comments but it is a case of having a more intelligent discussion about how to make a region competitive and that will include winning foreign investment. In Senator Ó Domhnaill's area of Letterkenny we are committing to building an advance production space because we believe the area has the capacity to grow, based on what the region has done. The last couple of years have been good for foreign investment in Donegal. There can be strong beacons in different regions but they have to be built on a solid foundation that will be a magnet to attract foreign investment.

This recession has hit younger people hard. There has been no public service recruitment and it is a case of last in, first out in other sectors. The other factor at work, apart from emigration, is the decline in the numbers in the younger age groups. The next population bulge will increase the numbers in the future. Youth unemployment is the challenge and this is the thinking behind the youth guarantee scheme. It is also the reason for the introduction of the youth entrepreneurship initiative. I refer to the programmes from the Departments of Education and Skills and Social Protection, such as Momentum and Springboard, also the traineeships and apprenticeship review, all of which recognise that we need to ensure that young people are equipped with the best skills to give them a fighting chance. One of the casualties of the recession, besides the collapse of banks, was the fact that people made career choices in an artificial economy which had been created. Employers did not invest in apprenticeships and parents wanted a different type of path for their children. Now it is hoped that we will return to having a small open economy that can create a sustainable competitive advantage in which skills will be important.

Senator Mary Ann O'Brien raised a number of issues about tax and regional aid. My view is that we will have regional aid advantage in certain regions dictated by Europe. Half the number of regions will have the added regional aid available to them. The debate about regions and their growth is not about extra grant aid but it is about creating a competitive advantage and how it is to be endorsed, but regional aid is one of the tools.

We need to examine the incentive structure associated with entrepreneurship. I would like a simplification of schemes such as the seed capital scheme. I am interested in the development of start-up companies. Serial entrepreneurs may be thinking about exiting. Last year's Finance Bill included provisions to encourage serial entrepreneurs. I would be in favour of a simplification of the seed capital scheme and the new BES because the take-up of those schemes is deplorably low even though they have the potential to be very valuable schemes for start-up and emerging companies.

My initial focus will be on the start-up entrepreneurs rather than those who are exiting. However, I accept that the exit will need to be examined and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, is willing to look at this whole area.

I agree about the challenge presented by businesses migrating to the web. Irish people spend €6 billion in trading on the web and 75% of that expenditure is lost to Irish companies because it goes overseas. It is predicted that in five years' time the expenditure figure will be €20 billion. The web will no longer be a bit player in Irish consumer spending but rather it will account for a significant amount of the Irish consumer spend - it could be more than one third in that short period of time. If we are not players and our businesses have not migrated to become players they will miss the boat and someone else will eat their lunch, literally. The 2,000 innovation vouchers have been based on a number of pilot schemes in partnership with the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and with one of the software associations. We have refined the scheme and we have a better idea of how it can be used. We will provide 2,000 vouchers but more than 2,000 businesses need to make the commitment. It is a case of making them aware of the scheme. If use of the web is not included in a business model that business will miss the boat. It is a case of understanding technological equipment and big cost savings can be achieved by ironing out problems.

I agree with Senator Lorraine Higgins that banking continues to be a problem for us. New banking players are needed in the marketplace. I will certainly consider the metro bank. There is a commitment to consider alternative funding sources such as crowd funding and all the alternatives. The European Investment Bank is examining whether we can do better in trade finance. KfW bank is in the market. The EIB has invested €200 million in AIB. The NPRF has €850 million invested in alternatives and Enterprise Ireland has €1 billion as an alternative to bank financing. There is about €2.5 billion available in alternatives to bank financing. These are not being fully utilised; it may be that the people do not know about them or perhaps the programme is not properly designed. We plan to revise the credit guarantee scheme this year because it was too restrictive in its initial design.

We would be delighted to receive details about the metro bank and how it works. There is a standing committee - it has some awful name to do with State bodies or something like that - on finance, the Central Bank and such worthy organisations. It examines this area and therefore if there are models we need to examine, that committee is examining those.

On the quality of jobs, which Senator Cullinane, who is not present, raised also, there is some misinformation being put out about that. The vast majority of the jobs created n the past 12 months have been full-time jobs. They are not part-time or yellow pack jobs. Nine out of the ten occupations have seen growth. They go from very low skilled, through the high skills up to the top skills; it is spread across the skill levels. It is not the case that we are seeing yellow pack working or a lot of part-time working. That is not to say there is not a problem. There are problems with people exploiting the live register rules to get cheap fits, so to speak, into the live register. There are issues in this area and we will examine those but, by and large, we are seeing quality employment in sectors that have been targeted and that are sustainable. That is encouraging but there are problems.

One of the issues that continues to be a concern is that in important sectors such as food and hospitality, we do not seem to have got an approach yet that provides a career path in these sectors that will attract people long-term into them. In France and some other countries this is considered a cherished profession to which chefs, waiters and everyone involved in food commit their lives. Even though it is a huge area of competitive advantage for us we do not have the right skill mix and the career paths, and there is more consideration to be done on that. Our colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, is very interested in that area and has taken initiatives to try to make changes in it.

Senator Sean Barrett raised a number of issues. In particular he said he would like to see more deregulation. Progress is being made in this field but there is always room for more progress to be made. I have substantially strengthened the Competition Authority. It has more resources, tougher penalties and the capacity to take on barriers to entry or any anti-competitive behaviour. There is an opening up in these sectors. Ten per cent of bus routes may not be a big figure but it is big compared to the large zero that applied, as the Senator rightly said, in the previous years. There is progress happening in that area.

On whether the construction boom could lead to another collapse, I do not believe we will repeat that collapse. The banking controls and the mistakes in the way the credit was driven based on external funding, and the way the banks deserted any sensible loan to deposit ratios, will not be made again but we must be conscious of not allowing over-heating in any sector. In many parts of the country the building cost is still higher than the sale cost, therefore, a builder will not start building. Seeing some recovery in price is part of seeing a return to normalcy in the construction sector but we must be alert in that regard. At a time when, by all common admission, the banks are not lending hand over fist, there is not a fear of a boom.

The Senator made the criticism that Bill lacks numbers and that it will not result in agencies being closed. We are closing down 35 county enterprise boards and creating an integrated structure within the local authorities with a centre of excellence from Enterprise Ireland. That is reform that will deliver better and remove 35 boards from the system. We are making changes.

In the employment rights and industrial relations area we are reducing five agencies down to two, and we believe we will deliver a better service. The evidence exists already that we are doing that. As the Senator acknowledged, we brought Forfás into our Department because I believe we need a policy engine within the Department. For too long we have had strong agencies and a weak policy capability in the Department. We are trying to reverse that and have an intelligent, capable policy arm within the Department. Imbued through all the divisions, and it is not just about one unit but about our entire Department having stronger policy capability, we are working more collaboratively across the Department and having those skills in-house. That is healthy both for the Department and for the agencies because it puts agencies under more scrutiny, and we can be more demanding of our agencies. That is very valuable.

The Senator is right about the need for new blood in the public service and to be fair to Deputy Brendan Howlin, that is an area he has addressed and will address increasingly in the future. The Senator will be pleased to know that economics was the first area he picked to strengthen the economic base of the public service. Obviously, he is listening to what the Senator is saying.

On the issue raised by Senator Michael Mullins, the February unemployment rate figure is down to 11.9% today. It was 12.1% at the end of last year and is now down to 11.9%, therefore, the trend continues to be in the right direction.

Senator Mullins talked about the domestic economy. He will have heard the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and the Taoiseach emphasise, with our forthcoming construction strategy, that there is an opportunity now to see the domestic economy recover. For the past four years the only source of growth in our economy was in exports. The Senator is right that we must continue our focus on that. It is not a question of letting up on the drive for competitiveness because we need to build our export base. If we can continue, as we did last year, to add 12,000 net jobs in export-oriented companies that will have a knock-on effect in the rest of the economy. We must keep our focus on exports but there is room to look more creatively at some of those other sectors, and that is what we are doing.

Senator Mullins also raised the issue of rural towns. I hope that the establishment of our local enterprise offices will start to bring local authority thinking into the enterprise space. Many people see local authorities as the drag on enterprise when it is probably one of the most powerful assets a county has in driving enterprise. If we can win over the local authority, and the local enterprise office is part of that campaign, to become a driver of enterprise, that would be very welcome. I would love to see the different counties vying to be the best county in Ireland in which to create a business, just as we are saying that to our European colleagues. That is the sort of thinking within our local authorities that would result in them being more innovative on areas such as rates or parking. It is to get them to think about those issues more creatively.

To be fair to local authorities, they have taken a big hit in resources. No one will be their fairy godmother, therefore, they can only give rate concessions as they achieve efficiencies. That is the reality in which we all live but the report of the city and county managers has shown that over 700 initiatives are being taken by different local authorities to support enterprise. Many of those could be mainstreamed. I do not know if there is a Senator here from Cork but Cork County Council has 1% of its rate set aside for enterprise support. It uses that every year to promote interesting projects in the Cork region, and it does that year in, year out. That is a very interesting approach, and there are many other examples of people who have played to their strengths.

Senator Cullinane is not present but we certainly will continue our focus on the south east. As I stated in my earlier remarks, there are an additional 15,000 people at work in the south east. Its unemployment rate came down by three points from 18.8% last year to 15.5%. It still is the highest rate in the country but that is very significant progress in a year, and we will continue to focus attention on that.

I will not venture to comment on the role of the Western Development Commission but my ambition is to create a regional enterprise framework where we can bring in more stakeholders in other parts of the State and non-State environment to back what we are trying to do in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

We need to give people a clear statement of the views of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the local enterprise offices on the areas for development and try to enlist support behind them. That is what we can do to try to create the environment.

We are preparing for the year of design in 2015. I believe it has the potential to be an interesting area, dipping into a wider range than we might be considering as our areas of competitive edge.

Senator Quinn is nothing if not persistent on the issue of upward-only rents. The truth is that it is not just the opinion of one lawyer, but of a series of lawyers, including the present and previous Attorneys General. Certainly the two parties gave it their very best shot to find a solution that is constitutionally sound, but we were unable to find one. Considerable effort went into it. At this point we are moving on to tackle other issues.

The issue was that to deal with a contract and remove the rights that a person had in a contract would require compensation and the taxpayer just does not have the money to be providing compensation. One man's rent that is too dear is another man's rent for a property on which he cannot afford to pay the mortgage. It is not always as simple as saying that the people who get the rents are wealthy and that the people who are paying the rents are poor; that is not the way. That is why the Constitution affords people rights that have to be protected.

However, we are doing the following. Through NAMA where a case is presented, NAMA landlords will adopt an approach of being flexible. Increasing flexibility is being shown and landlords are doing deals with tenants.

Clearly we are now trying to do things for the retail sector. Trading online is a lifeline and essential for the long-term future of retail. Taking up another of the Senator's themes, we are creating a single portal for retail businesses to be able to access all the licences - approximately 25 of them - with which they must comply. That will significantly reduce their costs.

We take into account the World Bank's ease of doing business tables. The Senator is right in pointing out that we are pretty competitive on starting a business when compared with most countries. New Zealand is undoubtedly better. We look at those rankings with a view to moving up. This year the National Competitiveness Council, on which we have put some new industry partners, will report quarterly to the Cabinet committee on these or other issues it has identified as having the capacity to give us an edge. If any Senator wishes to suggest any regulations he or she believes are redundant or should be changed, we certainly have the appetite to consider them.

There was an exercise up to 2012 in taking out administrative costs. It was designed to deliver a 25% reduction in administrative costs. In many areas it did so; in some areas it did not. A lot of things are happening. The House will shortly have before it a simplification of the companies legislation. That is a big dollop of work running to 1,500 sections, designed to make setting up and running a company easier. It will be easier to comply and provides for many simplifications relating to AGMs and boards of directors. That is coming the Senator's way and he might regret his enthusiasm for it when it arrives in the House because it is quite a Bill. We are definitely up for any simplification we can deliver. Senator Conway raised the same issues.

I have dealt with the issues as best I can. I again thank the Senators for their support for what we are doing here. This approach has the merit that there will be another plan in 2015. Between now and late summer we will be trying to glean new ideas and refine them to proposals we can implement. I am working with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation under the chairmanship of Deputy English, which is doing considerable good work. This provides a vehicle for continually adapting to changing circumstances, which is a real merit of the approach. We are all in learning mode trying to deal with this crisis.