Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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115. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his proposals for job creation throughout the regions, with particular reference to the need to achieve a reasonable balance in terms of economic investment, thereby contributing to a more co-ordinated, integrated and comprehensive development of job creation opportunities; if any infrastructural deficiencies need to be addressed in this context; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42249/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Regional Action Plans for Jobs Initiative was launched by Government in February of this year. The purpose of this initiative is to identify a range of actions over the period 2015 - 2017 aimed at facilitating each region to achieve its economic potential and raise employment levels in each of the regions.

The objective of the Regional Action Plans is to strengthen and develop regional collaboration by encouraging local authorities, regional bodies, higher education institutions, the private sector and communities to come forward with innovative ideas to boost job creation in their area. The aim is to capitalise on regional strengths, assets and areas of competitive advantage in order to support businesses in each region to start-up, succeed, expand, and export.

Each regional Action Plan includes a series of practical actions to support enterprise growth and job creation in the region, within clear timelines for delivery. As is the case with the national Action Plan process, it is the cumulative effect of delivering the actions in the regional Plans that will make a real and lasting impact on the business environment and jobs in the regions.

The primary objective of these plans is to have a further 10 to 15 per cent at work in each region by 2020 and to ensure the unemployment rate of each region is within one per cent of the State average.

Key targets in the Regional Action Plans published to date are to increase the number of entrepreneurs/start-ups in each region by a minimum of 25%, improve the 5-year survival rate by 25% and improve scaling performance of companies by 25%. Earlier this year IDA Ireland launched its 5 year strategy for the period 2015 to 2019 which aims to create 80,000 new jobs in the economy over the period and increase investment into each region by between 30% and 40%.

The Regional Action Plans will be supported by investment of up to €250 million over the next five years, including €150 million for a property investment programme by IDA Ireland. The intention is that up to €100 million will be made available over the next five years through three competitive calls to be administered by Enterprise Ireland. These competitive calls will be targeted at innovative and collaborative approaches to support job creation across the regions.

As stated above, the purpose of these Regional Action Plans is to build on existing strengths and opportunities in each region, while individual plans may reference infrastructure issues, it is not the intention to address such issues within these plans as these are prioritised within the Government’s National Capital Expenditure Framework in the areas where it can achieve greatest benefit and value for money.

To date five regional plans have been published covering the Midlands, South East, South West, Mid West, and West Regions. I hope to publish the North East/ North West plan by end November with plans for Mid East and Dublin regions currently in development.