Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

14. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which measures continue to be taken to monitor the jobs market, with a view to ensuring early detection, where jobs may be at risk; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18342/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Action Plan for Jobs (APJ) 2015 was published in January this year and is the fourth in the multi-annual series of a whole of government approach to economic recovery, export growth and job creation. The Action Plan for Jobs set a target to increase employment by 100,000 by 2016 and we are well on track to achieve that figure this year, ahead of the target. Much work remains to be done however to replace all the jobs lost in the downturn, the target which we have set is to achieve sustainable full employment by 2018. This will require enhanced focus on developing skills and capability on the competitiveness of our sectors; on new business start-up, on developing new opportunities and on anticipating threats to existing jobs.

With this year’s plan (APJ2015) we have embedded a new assessment framework, which will improve monitoring associated with our employment policies. This is in response to a suggestion by the OECD that one area of improvement for APJ was to more clearly link actions to outcomes. For the first time we will be able to assess how actions increase sales, stimulate the domestic economy (retail, construction, tourism, agri-food), improve skills, activation and startups, enhance productivity and R&D, make doing business easier and cheaper, and enhance funding availability for SMEs. A full set of assessment metrics is set out in Annex 2 of APJ2015. As well as helping assess the effectiveness of the APJ, these metrics will also enhance monitoring of the jobs environment with a view to ensuring early detection of areas of risk or indeed opportunity.

My Department, Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and the Local Enterprise Offices work closely with individual enterprises to identify early warnings of difficulty, to seek to minimise job losses where possible and to develop responses to assist the enterprises get on a firmer footing for the future.

My Department is also developing a dashboard of indicators which provide early indicators of changes occurring in areas critical to the developing environment which influences enterprise and jobs. This includes tracking of Labour Market data from the CSO and our various agencies but also trends in company formation, in purchasing managers indices, in company formation, in relation to indices of competitiveness etc. This early intelligence better inform our policy responses and longer-term strategies.