Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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71. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his views on reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and others that outline how job creation is not linked directly to Government; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3455/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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As the OECD has acknowledged, job creation “can be stimulated through a stable macro-economic framework” and also “structural policies which encourage innovation, skills and business development” (OECD, 2014). While this Government has always acknowledged that it is businesses, not Government, that create jobs, we understand that every Government Department has a role in improving the environment for job creation and this whole of Government effort has been integrated into the Action Plan for Jobs process to achieve our goal to replace all of the jobs lost during the economic crisis and deliver sustainable full employment by the end of 2020.

The OECD itself carried out a review of the Action Plan for Jobs process in 2014 and concluded that the Action Plan for Jobs was a “most welcome and important initiative when launched in February 2012”, remarking that its “focus on private sector-led, export oriented job creation by getting framework conditions right and continually upgrading the business environment is a sound approach”.

It also stated that the Action Plan for Jobs process marked “an important innovation in Irish governance” and that “The APJ'’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. These are important steps towards addressing long-standing gaps that undermine successful policy implementation”.

This Government’s commitment to stabilising the macro-economic framework and introducing policies which encourage innovation, skills and business development, as embodied in the Action Plan for Jobs process, is working. Since the first Action Plan for Jobs was launched in Q1 2012, 135,800 more people are at work. In the first three quarters of 2015, 43,400 new jobs were created – the target for the year was 40,000. The unemployment rate has fallen below nine per cent for the first time since 2008, down from a high of 15.1 per cent in early 2012 to 8.8 per cent in December 2015.

Action Plan for Jobs 2016, the fifth Plan, was launched last week and marks the transition from the first phase of an economy recovering from the most severe recession when we set a target to get 100,000 people back to a new phase when we have doubled the jobs, target to 200,000 and the ambition to create a competitive, innovative, highly productive economy providing sustainable full employment for its people. It also marks the transition to the implementation of key Government policies that plan for medium term growth. Enterprise 2025 is our ten year jobs and enterprise strategy, which sets out the roadmap to build a sustainable economy and have 2.18 million people at work by 2020, the highest in the history of the State.