Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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43. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which his Department has monitored possible obstacles to job retention and job creation; if any specific measures are contemplated in this regard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44737/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Action Plan for Jobs(APJ) is a whole-of-Government approach to job retention and job creation, with a specific ambition to have 100,000 more people in work by 2016. The first annual APJ was launched in February 2012, and its first successor was published in February 2013. Together, these comprised over 600 specific actions. The third APJ was published in February of this year, building on and drawing lessons from its predecessors. This multi-annual Framework represents a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to strengthening the competitiveness of the Irish economy and to stimulating job creation and retention. Coupled with this, the APJ process contains a rigorous quarterly monitoring and reporting system.

The 2014 Action Plan, with a strong focus on the domestic economy, improving competitiveness and supporting our entrepreneurs and smaller firms with new Local Enterprise Offices, contains 385 actions. In total since the APJ was launched almost 1,000 actions have been proposed and progressed in order to deliver private sector-led, export-oriented economic growth and job creation.

The OECD has reviewed the APJ process and has found that the Plan’s most striking innovation in the Irish public policy context is a coordination mechanism that ensures high-level political buy-in and oversight, whole-of-government engagement and the establishment of quarterly targets underpinned by a robust monitoring system.

As of Q2 2014 there were1.9 million people were employed, an increase of 33,500 on last year. At 11% the rate of unemployment is still unacceptably high. This is why the Government has designated 2014 to be the “year for jobs”; we are working relentlessly to ensure that the unemployment rate continues to decrease.

In the third quarter of 2014, Departments and agencies were to deliver 100 measures relating to 84 of APJ2014’s 385 actions. Some 88 of the measures due in Quarter 3 (Q3) of 2014 have been delivered, giving a completion rate of 88%. In delivering 88 third quarter measures under the Plan, the Government has, for example launched two programmes to support Youth/Graduate Entrepreneurship, a competitive Youth/Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund to complement the new LEOs/Microfinance Youth Programme, and rolled out “Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur” competition which involves a total fund of €2 million. The Government also launched a national trading online voucher scheme in Q3, which will target the distribution of 1,000 vouchers to Irish SME’s in 2014, and which involves all 31 Local Enterprise Offices. These are just some examples of the practical job retention and job creation steps taken recently under the Action Plan process.

The Action Plan for Jobs is complemented with the Government’s Pathways to Worklabour market activation strategy. The Pathways to Workstrategy, first introduced in 2012 and led by the Department of Social Protection, seeks to ensure that as many newly created jobs as possible go to people on the Live Register. The key strands of Pathways to Work include incentivising employers to provide more jobs for those who are unemployed, better engagement with unemployed people, greater targeting of activation places and opportunities for those who are long-term unemployed, and incentivising the take-up of employment opportunities by unemployed jobseekers.

In addition, we are continually monitoring skills supply and demand within the economy through the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs. For example, over recent years there have been substantial job gains in the high-tech sector. The Government’s national ICT Skills Action Plan for 2014-2018 sets out a range of measures to build the domestic supply of high level ICT skills and will confer a significant advantage on companies operating in Ireland and create a substantial level of sustainable employment opportunities for Irish graduates.