Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he has targets for creating jobs so as to reduce unemployment over the coming year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39029/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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There are two major elements to the Government’s response to reducing unemployment – the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work. The goal of the Action Plan for Jobs is to support the retention of jobs in the economy and the creation of new ones. The aim of Pathways to Work is to help to ensure that as many of those new jobs as possible are filled by people from the Live Register.

The Action Plan takes a whole of Government approach to improving the operating environment for business. It is an annual process and, each year, specific measures will be identified to support the objective of adding 100,000 net new jobs to the economy by 2016.

The aim of Pathways to Work is to develop a new approach to engaging with people on the Live Register, particularly those who are long-term unemployed. The establishment of the new National Employment and Entitlement Service will transform the nature and level of engagement between the employment services and the unemployed. It will also provide better targeted services to both job seekers and employers.

Pathways to Work includes the objective of ensuring that at least 75,000 of those who are currently long-term unemployed will move into employment by 2015. It also aims to reduce the average length of time spent on the Live Register from 21 months to less than 12 months over the same period.

The labour market activation measures outlined in Pathways to Work include over 85,000 job placement/work experience places to be delivered this year by the Department of Social Protection, and over 450,000 training and education places to be delivered by the Department of Education and Skills this year.

Given the scale of the problems this Government inherited, turning around the economy cannot be achieved overnight. That is why we have set challenging, but achievable, targets and timeframes for delivery under the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work.