Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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22. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the progress of the latest Action Plan for Jobs; the number of its objectives that have been achieved; and the number of jobs created which are directly linked to the plan. [48145/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The 2014 Action Plan for Jobs was published last February and builds on the 2012 and 2013 Action Plans. This year’s Plan includes 385 actions for delivery across all Government Departments and 46 agencies. The 385 actions are broken down into quarterly milestones for delivery, and these are reported on every three months. The Quarterly Progress reports are published on my Department’s website, www.djei.ie. For the first three Quarters of this year, approximately 88% of the quarterly milestones had been delivered on schedule. This would suggest we are on target for an overall delivery in the order of 90% of all actions this year, consistent with the out-turn for the 2012 and 2013 Action Plans. Any actions that are delayed from this year’s Plan will be carried into next year.

Some of the key deliverables on the part of Government under the Action Plan this year include:

- the establishment of 31 Local Enterprise Offices,

- publication of a national Entrepreneurship Policy Statement,

- recruitment of additional resources for IDA Ireland in strategic locations overseas,

- the National roll-out of the Trading On-Line Voucher scheme,

- publication of the Construction 2020 strategy,

- funding of €245 million for the establishment of 5 new world-class SFI Research Centres,

- publication of the Further Education and Training Strategy,

- upskilling for those who are unemployed is being provided for through courses such as Springboard and Momentum.,

- the establishment of a €35 million Energy Efficiency Fund to support improved energy efficiency in the public and commercial sectors.

The overall objective of the Action Plan for Jobs process is to support the creation of an extra 100,000 jobs in the economy by 2016, compared to the start of 2012.

The latest Quarterly National Household Survey published by the CSO shows that, on a seasonally adjusted basis, around 80,000 new jobs have been created since the start of the Action Plan process in 2012, net of a reduction of 19,000 in public sector numbers.

Employment has increased in 10 of the 14 economic sectors, including Construction, Tourism, and Professional and Scientific activities – all areas of focus for the Action Plan for Jobs.

All regions have seen employment increase and unemployment decrease since the launch of the first Action Plan for Jobs.

We are on track to achieve the target of having an extra 100,000 people at work by 2016. However, there are still many areas where there is scope to improve the environment to support job creation. I am currently preparing the 2015 Action Plan for Jobs on behalf of the Government and we will be publishing this Plan early in the New Year.