Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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59. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing services sectors that have qualified for State or EU support in each of the past five years to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23974/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Development Agencies and the new Local Enterprise Offices operate a range of supports and services, including assisting companies in both the Manufacturing and Services sectors, as both of these sectors are crucial to the economy and to job creation. In addition, it can be possible for companies to also access State or EU supports from other sources. However many companies are not exclusively in either the manufacturing or services sectors and not all such companies are eligible for assistance, depending on complex rules. For these reasons, there is considerable difficulty in providing clearly defined data as sought by the Deputy and the information requested is not easily available in the format requested.

The Forfás Strategy for the Manufacturing Sector, which I commissioned and which was published last year, identified that an additional 20,000 jobs can be created in the sector by 2016. To this end, the enterprise agencies and other relevant players have been tasked with working to enhance the competitiveness of manufacturing in Ireland by working with companies and implementing the recommendations in the Strategy. Some of this assistance will take the form of mentoring and management development, rather than financial support. That sector lost 50,000 jobs in the years up to 2010 but at the end of 2013, there were a total of 215,900 people directly employed in the sector, which was an increase of 10,000 on the numbers identified at the time the Strategy was published. This sector also supports a similar number of jobs indirectly, only some of which would be State supported.

Foreign-owned firms contribute substantially to Ireland’s exports, jobs, expenditure in the Irish economy and to Exchequer funds and IDA Ireland has been very successful in attracting these foreign companies, many of which have manufacturing or service-related activity, or even both, but not all of whom would qualify for financial support. It has been established that every 10 jobs created in multinational companies lead to approximately 7 jobs being created elsewhere in the economy in supply and service businesses, so the employment generation is very significant.

Enterprise Ireland (EI) works in partnership with Irish enterprises to help them start, grow, innovate and win export sales on global markets. That Agency works with about 3,500 client companies and those clients include many in Manufacturing and Internationally Traded Services sectors, but also others in the innovation space, which are not as easy to exclusively categorise.

The Services sector accounts for two thirds of total employment within Ireland. While the majority of service firms are not supported by the State, in respect of agency supported companies, the job creation trend is very positive. A range of sectoral initiatives have been devised to facilitate new and established services companies to grow, with particular focus on International Financial Services, Business Process Outsourcing/Shared Services, Education Services, Retail and Wholesale, Tourism, Construction Services and ICT Services.

Both the manufacturing and services sectors are therefore important sectors for job growth potential and there will be a continued focus on their development, but inevitably only some of this support will be financial.