Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 124: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of job losses in each of the past five years to date; the number created in the same period; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24227/08]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The table below sets out the numbers in employment and unemployment in the years 2004 to 2008.

Employment has increased by 302,100 in the five-year period while unemployment has increased by 18,600 over the same period. Employment is forecast to grow by over 1% or 24,000 in 2008. The number of redundancies per year between 2003 and 2007 are set out in the table below.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 125: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if an evaluation has been carried out on the impact on the economy of job relocation to lower cost economies; the results of such studies, if this trend continues; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24228/08]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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There are various reasons why firms decide to relocate. Firms adjust their plant location and utilisation strategies to address matters such as accessing new markets, moving production nearer to customers, meeting firm or market specific customer relationship issues, accessing technology or other competitive considerations. We are equipped to manage this process successfully and enterprise policies have enabled the economy to replace lost jobs with others that are of the same or higher skill level.

My Department and Enterprise Agencies do not audit the extent to which job losses in the economy arise due to firms relocating abroad. We do have information, however, from client companies which have closed plants or downsized their workforces suggesting that job losses have been attributable to a range of factors including loss of contracts or a drop in demand for products, restructuring and rationalisation within companies and relocation of operations abroad. The last mentioned of these factors, according to the feedback from these companies, has been a relatively minor factor.

The relocation of businesses within particular types of industry is a reality of modern global manufacturing for a highly developed economy such as Ireland. IDA Ireland places significant focus on embedding existing multinational enterprises in Ireland, by encouraging such enterprises to increase the scale of Irish subsidiaries, and to also expand the range of activities undertaken in Irish subsidiaries to include less mobile types of operations for example R&D activities and Supply Chain Management. This process of embedding subsidiaries of multinational enterprises makes relocation less likely.