Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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299. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation when preliminary data will be available to report on progress on creating an additional 200,000 jobs by 2020 with 135,000 outside Dublin as per the programme for partnership Government; if this data will be made available before the end of 2016; if not, when in 2017 this data is expected; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31338/16]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The goal of this Government is to support the creation of an additional 200,000 jobs by 2020 with 135,000 outside Dublin. This is a whole of Government effort and is delivered through our integrated Action Plan for Jobs.

The Action Plan for Jobs is one of the Government’s key instruments to support job creation. The Action Plan for Jobs process is working. Since the first Plan was launched in early 2012, there are 176,800 more people at work bringing total employment in the State to 2,014,400 by end of June 2016. The unemployment rate has fallen to 7.9% in September 2016, down from a high of 15.1% in early 2012.

We use the CSO Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) seasonally adjusted data to report on progress to meet national jobs targets. This data is published quarterly and the latest data available is for Q2 2016. There are 36,000 additional people at work in the first six months of the year. The target for the year is 50,000 additional jobs.

The Regional Action Plans for Jobs aim to have an additional 10 to 15% at work in each region by 2020. The first progress reports on the implementation of the eight Plans, covering the period to June 2016, are being finalised and will be published following presentation to the Cabinet Committee on Economy, Trade and Jobs, which will be held shortly.

The process to develop APJ 2017 is currently underway. I want to ensure that the 2017 Plan is ambitious and impactful and keeps us on track to deliver on our 2020 jobs target.

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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300. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation when preliminary data will be available to report on progress on regional job targets projected in the programme for Government for 2020 and in Enterprise 2025 by year in tabular form; the way she will achieve these and the monitoring and reporting mechanisms in place; her job targets up to 2020, by region; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31339/16]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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301. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation when preliminary data will be available to report on progress for each regional job target projected in Enterprise 2025; if this data will be made available before the end of 2016; if not, when in 2017 this data is expected; the reporting mechanisms that will be put in place to provide timely reporting and publishing of such data; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31340/16]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take questions No. 300 and No. 301 together.

Ireland’s return to economic growth has demonstrated our ability, through concerted efforts across Government, to focus actions on those areas that help to create jobs. We have made substantial progress since the Action Plan for Jobs process was first introduced in 2012 with the unemployment rate falling from 15.1% at the start of the Action Plan for Jobs process to 8.6 percent in Q2 2016, and over 176,000 extra at work since early 2012.

The Programme for Partnership Government commits to maintaining the OECD-endorsed Action Plan for Jobs process and also sets out a target to create an additional 200,000 jobs over the period 2016 to 2020, informed by the statement on enterprise policy, Enterprise 2025.

Building on the success of the Action Plan for Jobs process, we are focused on ensuring that we can support new job creation in every region in the country, through the implementation of the Regional Action Plans for Jobs. A key objective of the plans is to have a further 10 to 15 per cent at work in each region by 2020, with the aim, as set out in Enterprise 2025, of having the unemployment rate of each region within one per cent of the national average.

The Regional Action Plan initiative brings the different stakeholders in each of the regions together to identify a range of innovative and practical actions, to be taken across a range of Departments and agencies, with clear timelines for delivery over the period 2015 – 2017.

Each Plan is being monitored and driven in each region by a Regional Implementation Committee, with membership drawn from industry, local authorities, Enterprise Agencies, education sector and other key stakeholders and agencies. Collaboration between the private and the public sector has been a core element in each plan’s development, and will be central to each plan’s delivery. The first Progress Reports on the implementation of the Plans, covering the period to end-June 2016, will be completed and published in Q4 2016.

The targets for additional jobs to be created in each of the 8 regions covered by the Regional Action Plan initiative are set out in the table below. By delivering on the full potential of the Plans, the aim is to deliver a total of 246,000 jobs by 2020. In keeping with the medium to longer term ambition of the Regional Plans, these plans are not broken down on a yearly basis.

Achieving these ambitious targets at regional level will require a renewed focus on collaborative efforts to build on regional strengths, assets and areas of competitive advantage to develop the attractive and competitive environments for business to start, grow and succeed on international markets and to attract inward investment.