Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The South East region is a good example of what can be achieved in creating sustainable employment growth through strong collaborative effort at local level. The economic crisis hit the South East’s job numbers badly with the loss of 37,800 jobs from Q1 2007 to Q1 2012. However, through the focused collaborative approach and a range of reforms delivered in the region, over the period Q1 2012 to Q4 2015 the unemployment rate has fallen from 20.1 to 11.9 per cent, with 205,400 at work, an increase of 24,100 over the period. The report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on a South East Economic Development Strategy (SEEDS), which was launched in September 2013, was a very helpful contribution to identifying possible interventions to assist the economic development of the South East region.

At the end of 2011, after the announcement of sudden job losses in Talk Talk in Waterford, I published the South East Employment Action Plan and established an implementation group of stakeholders in the region for the Action Plan, the South East Forum, which I Chaired. Through collaboration among all stakeholders, the Forum did succeed in implementing the Action Plan and the key actions and recommendations in the SEEDS report and demonstrated what could be achieved in all regions, as we prepared the eight Regional Action Plan for Jobs in 2015.

I am particularly pleased that the key recommendations of the Action Plan and SEEDS reports are having a demonstrable impact on the performance and the potential of the South East region. We have reformed and are seeing the growing impact of the Local Enterprise Office network developed through the close cooperation between EI and the Local Authorities; the new Education and Training Boards in Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford have a fresh mandate, who like the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are now focused on developing a stronger link with their local enterprise base; we have strengthened the Regional Offices of IDA and EI with a new focus in their respective national strategies on regional job growth and the appointment of an IDA regional director in the South East; and the emergence of a stronger policy framework to underpin sectorial opportunities with a strong profile at regional level. We have also sustained an attractive investment aid regime for the South East region and the establishment of a new Regional Skills Forum in the region by the Department of Education and Skills will ensure a focus on attaining ambitious targets improved educational attainment and skills provision in the region.

The core objective of the South East Regional Action Plan for Jobs launched in 2015 is to support an ambitious programme of enterprise growth and job creation in region over the medium and longer term, as advocated in the SEEDS report. The primary objective of the South East is APJ-R is to realise the potential to have a further 10-15 per cent at work in the region by 2020 so as to ensure the unemployment rate is within the 1 per cent of the State average.

Among the actions in the Action Plan to be delivered over the period 2015-2017 include increasing Start-ups/SMEs by 30%, at least 44 additional IDA supported investments in the region over the coming years, a 20% increase in jobs in exporting companies, in particular in manufacturing, agrifood, businesses services and biopharma/medtech and an 85% increase in agrifood exports over the next 10 years and delivering 300,000 extra tourists and 5,000 associated jobs including developing Ireland’s Ancient East. The implementation of South East APJ-R is being led by a collaborative enterprise and public sector Group, chaired by enterprise champion Frank O'Regan, with the active support of the five County CEOs in the region and my Department will work closely with the Group as it progresses the Plan over the coming period.