Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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448. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which her Department has identified the most important issues affecting job retention based on the performance over the past eight years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23277/16]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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We have made substantial progress on growing and retaining employment. Since the Action Plan for Jobs process was first introduced in 2012, the unemployment rate has reduced from 15.1% to 7.8% in June 2016, with 155,000 extra at work. The Programme for a Partnership Government places the retention and growth of employment at the centre of our economic strategy. It sets out a target to create an additional 200,000 jobs over the period 2016 to 2020, with 135,000 jobs to be created outside Dublin. Ireland’s return to economic growth has demonstrated our ability, through concerted efforts across Government, to focus actions on those areas that help to retain and create jobs in all parts of the country. The Programme commits to sustaining the cross government focus on addressing the challenges set out in Enterprise 2025 strategy, the Government’s long-term enterprise policy.

Enterprise 2025 sets the objective of delivering growth over the next decade that is sustainable, led by strong export performance, builds on our sectoral strengths, and that is underpinned by innovation, productivity, cost effectiveness and competitiveness. We aim to build resilience into our economy so that we do not suffer again as we have done in the past number of years. Enterprise 2025 is a strategy that aims to build an economy that will not just achieve full employment but will sustain it in the long term.

Enterprise 2025 is a whole of enterprise strategy, aimed at delivering opportunities across all regions and across all sectors, including both manufacturing and services activities. Through a partnership approach with enterprise, representative bodies, the enterprise development agencies, Local Enterprise Offices and others, delivering a step change in enterprise performance and resilience will see a significant increase in Irish owned companies of scale, contributing to Ireland’s reputation for innovation in international markets. We are targeting a doubling of Irish owned companies with sales in excess of €100 million.

It is also about establishing a vibrant and stimulating ecosystem for entrepreneurship, in particular female entrepreneurship, to deliver an increase the number of start-ups by 25 percent per annum – start-ups that have better survival rates. We also need to ensure that individual enterprises, and the economy more generally, gain from impactful inter-firm relationships throughout the country, through stimulating the establishment of clusters of scale and international visibility in areas of strength. Ireland is, and will continue to be, the best place to succeed in business, delivering sustainable employment and higher standards of living for all.