Written answers

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Job Creation

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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618. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the implementation of the south east economic development strategy published by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in 2013; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29491/16]

Photo of Mary Mitchell O'ConnorMary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on a South East Economic Development Strategy (SEEDS) referred to by the Deputy was a very helpful contribution in identifying possible interventions to assist the economic development of the South East region.

The South East Economic Forum was established to drive the recommendations of the South East Employment Action Plan, developed in late 2011. The membership of the Forum comprised representatives from my Department and its enterprise agencies, County Councils, the education sector, Teagasc and Fáilte Ireland. The Forum progressed a significant number of actions from the 2011 Plan. With the development of the broader South East Region Action Plan for Jobs (APJ), which was launched in September 2015, the role of the Forum was subsumed into the implementation process for the Regional Action Plan and many of the organisations that were represented on the Forum continue to be involved in overseeing its implementation.

In addition, many of the key recommendations of the South East Employment Action Plan and the 2013 South East Economic Development Strategy (SEEDS) reports were incorporated into the South East APJ where appropriate, and are currently being implemented through that mechanism.

The core objective of the South East APJ 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 APJ 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 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 agri-food exports over the next 10 years.

Tourism also plays a pivotal part in the Plan towards job creation and includes measures to accelerate the tourism targets set for the south east over the next 10 years, in particular, to attract over 300,000 extra tourists and to create at least 5,000 associated jobs including developing Ireland’s Ancient East.

The latest figures from the CSO show encouraging signs that the region is recovering with the unemployment rate having fallen from a peak of 20.1 per cent in Q1 2012 to 10.8 per cent in Q2 2016, with almost 214,000 now at work – an increase of 27,800 over the period. Also, the number of persons on the Live Register in September for the South East has fallen by 6,152 and now stands at 38,034 compared to 44,186 a year ago.

The implementation of South East APJ 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 is working closely with the Group as it progresses the Plan.

The first progress report from the Implementation Committee is being finalised and will be published in the fourth quarter of 2016.

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