Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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17. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will report on the progress of the Action Plan for Jobs 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29910/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Action Plan for Jobs is underpinned by a rigorous monitoring mechanism and by the publication of quarterly Progress Reports on the implementation of individual actions. This year’s Action Plan contains 385 actions to be delivered across all Government Departments and over 40 public bodies. Most of these actions have interim quarterly milestones to be achieved as part of the delivery of the headline action. The interim measures are set out in a series of tables which were published in parallel with the Action Plan for Jobs last February.

Progress Reports on the quarterly milestones are compiled centrally by the Department of An Taoiseach and are published on the Action Plan for Jobs page on my Department’s website, . The Progress Report for the first Quarter of 2014 under the Action Plan for Jobs showed that 97 of the 103 measures to be delivered in Quarter 1 were implemented on schedule, giving a 94% completion rate. The Progress Report for the second Quarter is currently being compiled by the Department of An Taoiseach and should be published during July.

Since the start of the Action Plan for Jobs process in 2012, over 600 actions, containing over 1,100 individual quarterly measures, have been delivered across all Departments and a wide range of public bodies. The overarching objective of all of these actions is to improve the operating environment for businesses in order to support job creation. The most recent Quarterly National Household Survey published by the Central Statistics Office, for Quarter 1 2014, showed that the number of people in employment increased by over 63,000 since the Action Plan for Jobs process began. Live Register figures published last week show that the number of people signing on the Register continues to decrease and is at its lowest level since April 2009.

Nonetheless, our unemployment rate is still too high and we must maintain our focus on creating a supportive environment for employment growth through the continued delivery of the Action Plan for Jobs.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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18. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he will report on the costs to the Exchequer of initiatives contained in the Action Plan for Jobs 2014. [29911/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The 2014 Action Plan for Jobs contains 385 actions to support job creation which will be delivered across all Government Departments and over 40 public bodies. The actions include measures to support entrepreneurship, improve the capability of indigenous companies, deepen the impact of foreign direct investment, improve our competitiveness, and support the development of key sectors of the economy.

Many of the initiatives under the Action Plan for Jobs are aimed at reducing administrative burdens on business and do not require Exchequer funding. For example, within my own Department, procedures have been streamlined to reduce processing times for Employment Permits and to facilitate the on-line filing of returns to the Companies Registrations Office. Supports to mico-enterprises have been reformed through the creation of the Local Enterprise Offices, and a major restructuring of the workplace relations bodies is taking place which will improve the efficiency of those bodies and help to bring disputes to a speedier conclusion. Other initiatives in areas such as Big Data are leveraging inputs from the enterprise sector.

There are, of course, Exchequer costs associated with many other initiatives in the Action Plan for Jobs and funding for these is included in the budgetary allocations of the relevant Departments. These allocations are negotiated by Departments as part of the annual Estimates cycle and funding for specific Action Plan measures may be a sub-set of a broader budget line for a Department or agency. In these circumstances, and given the range of measures being delivered across all Departments, it is not feasible to disaggregate the Exchequer costs of initiatives under the Action Plan for Jobs.

However, the Action Plan has been effective in prioritising the areas where Exchequer resources are being directed to support job creation. We have, for instance, seen funding being allocated to initiatives such as the new Trading On-Line voucher scheme as well as a suite of measures to improve access to finance for SMEs. Additional manpower has also been provided to IDA Ireland this year to intensify our efforts to grow employment through foreign direct investment.