Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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320. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his plans to address and alleviate the high rate of jobless homes in the State; his plans to address concerns regarding Government policy in this regard; and as lead Minister with responsibility for the Action Plan for Jobs, the policy tools that will be used to decrease the current number of jobless homes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12120/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The issue of jobless households has been a particular focus of Government's labour market activation policy in recent years, most especially in the Pathways to Work series led by the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection. Indeed, the first of the five strands set out in Pathways to Work is to ensure better engagement with unemployed people and jobless households. To that end the Department of Social Protection committed to preparing a report on jobless households to assess the factors influencing the level of jobless households and develop a range of recommendations to allow Government to take tangible steps to assist these households to return to work. In June 2014, the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, published the report "Jobless Households: An Exploration of the Issues". The report notes the sharp increase in jobless households in Ireland following the economic crash in 2008 and that Ireland has a high level of household joblessness compared to other European countries, with nearly one-quarter, 23 per cent of households in Ireland described as jobless (in 2010). NESC refer to the responses made to address the problem of unemployment, if not specifically household joblessness namely, Action Plan for Jobs (APJ), Pathways to Work as well as the work of the Advisory Group on Tax and Social Welfare. Notable reforms, according to NESC, include the transformation of the public employment and education and training services, as well as reconfiguration of the One Parent Family Payment.

For my Department the focus continues to be on creating the conditions to support export-led, broadly-based economic growth and job creation via the Action Plan for Jobs. The latest APJ was published in January and contains 382 actions broken down into quarterly steps and owners. The objectives and actions set out in the Plan are designed to achieve specific impacts such as in terms of jobs, exports and startups, market penetration and innovation, efficiency of public interaction with business, finance and access to talent. In terms of employment, almost 90,000 more people are at work since the launch of the first Action Plan for Jobs in 2012. In terms of unemployment, last year over 141,000 people left the live register to take up work. Unemployment is still at 10.4 per cent and many people and firms around the country are yet to feel the full benefits of the recovery. The Government has pulled in by two years our full-employment target of 2.1 million at work from 2020 to 2018, and the Action Plan for Jobs and related strategies are in place to ensure that the unemployment problem and the associated issue of household joblessness is addressed. It is also worth noting the role that budgetary policy has in this area, and a recent social impact assessment of the main welfare and tax measures in the Budget for 2015 finds that for the first time since the economic crisis, budgetary policy will result in an increase in average household incomes of 0.7 per cent. Welfare increases favour lower income households, and there is a marked contrast between the impact of the 2015 and 2014 budgetary measures as gains replace losses, with the most significant improvements for the poorest and richest households.