Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 187: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation his strategy to replace jobs lost throughout the economy in the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2893/11]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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The role of my Department is to ensure that we have the right policies in place that will support and grow our enterprise base in order to facilitate both job creation and job retention. The National Recovery Plan, which was published by the Government on 24th November, provides a blueprint for Ireland's return to sustainable economic growth. It identifies the areas of activity, which will provide increased employment opportunities as Ireland's economic recovery takes place. The Plan sets out a range of specific actions and supports designed to improve competitiveness across all sectors of the economy. These include measures to cut costs to business, the removal of barriers to employment creation, and a range of sector-specific actions to increase exports and domestic demand.

In September, the Taoiseach launched the five-year integrated Government plan for trade, tourism and investment aimed at generating 300,000 jobs by the end of 2015. The new plan, "Trading and Investing in a Smart Economy", is the first integrated strategy to promote overseas trade, tourism and investment. With this new strategy, the Government aims to position Ireland for strong export-led growth to 2015, resulting in high levels of job creation. The plan aims to create over 150,000 direct new jobs (IDA Ireland 75,000, Enterprise Ireland 60,000, tourism 15,000) in manufacturing, tourism and internationally trading services, with another 150,000 spin-off jobs.

The programmes supported by my Department and its agencies will be critical in achieving a return to economic growth through promoting the export potential of enterprise in Ireland and advancing the Smart Economy Agenda. The allocation in Budget 2011 of €508m in capital funding will ensure that the enterprise agencies' core programmes are sustained and targeted. This will include actions to position Ireland as a Global Innovation Hub.

The State Development agencies, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, and the County and City Enterprise Boards are continuing to drive and promote enterprise development, and consequently employment creation in our economy. IDA Ireland continues to market and promote Ireland for inward investment. Indeed, on 15 January, Intel, an IDA client company that already employs over 4,000 people in Ireland, announced that it is to begin a substantial new €375 million construction project at its Leixlip technology campus. This infrastructure project will create a further 850 construction jobs on the Leixlip campus. The company will also be creating 200 new high level jobs on the Leixlip campus as a result of this technology upgrade. The fact that Intel has chosen to further invest here is an enormous vote of confidence and endorsement of Ireland as a competitive location for global investment.

Enterprise Ireland is actively focused on the creation of new jobs through supporting entrepreneurs setting up new high potential start-up companies, and the retention and creation of new jobs in existing companies. The County and City Enterprise Boards support the micro enterprise sector - businesses with 10 employees or less - in the start-up and expansion phases and promotes entrepreneurship at local level.

In addition to delivering programmes through the Enterprise Development agencies, my Department also works across Government to ensure that Ireland regains competitiveness, including cost competitiveness, thus improving the business environment and enabling companies to successfully compete internationally and grow jobs.