Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the number of new jobs created by his Department as a result of the jobs initiative; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37277/12]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the number of new jobs created by his Department as a result of the action plan on jobs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37293/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 213 and 214 together.

Any matters relating to the jobs initiative are dealt with by my colleague the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton, TD.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the number of new jobs created by his Department as a result of Budget 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37309/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Government framed Budget 2012 in such a way as to make it as job friendly as possible, with various sectoral measures aimed at job creation. As I stated on Budget day, the primary purpose of the Budget was to support the creation and retention of jobs in the short term, the medium term and the long term. This has to be balanced with the need to restore public finances to a sound footing. I would like to point out that employment data are presented in net terms and information on gross flows into and out of employment is not available. This makes it difficult to assess the number of jobs created by any policy initiative. Having said that, I think it is fair to say that there are tentative signs of stabilisation in labour market conditions. For instance, the latest data from the Live Register showed an annual decrease of 13,457 (-2.9%) people on the Live Register in August. This helped to reduce the unemployment rate to 14.7 per cent, although clearly this remains way too high.

So, leaving aside the fact that quantifying the impact is difficult, I am confident that the measures targeted at job creation for the different sectors of the economy in Budget 2012, as well as the measures introduced by the Jobs Initiative, such as reducing the rate of VAT in the high value added tourism sector, are playing an important role in both creating and sustaining employment. Finally, I want to reiterate that addressing the labour market difficulties remains the Governments biggest challenge and, accordingly, Government is giving its highest priority to job protection and job creation.