Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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254. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the total amount of her Department’s budget spent on the action plan for jobs in terms for advertising, and campaign promotion in 2016 and 2017, broken down by the amount of funds per each regional action plan for jobs; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39230/16]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The Action Plan for Jobs is working. Based on the latest CSO data released earlier this week, 189,500 additional people are at work since the start of the Action Plan for Jobs Process in 2012. Over the last twelve months, an additional 56,500 are at work. The unemployment rate is now down to 7.9%, from over 15.1% in 2012. Over 72% of the additional jobs created were outside Dublin. The Department does not advertise its annual Action Plan for Jobs, the first one of which was launched in February 2012, and each year since.

A key thrust of the approach to supporting job creation has been to develop a concerted effort to raise awareness of the supports available to firms through a one-stop website. In response to a well-recognised demand for more information on Government supports for SMEs, the Department decided to run an awareness campaign to address this deficit. Following a tender process in the Official Journal of the European Union, a successful tender was identified. This awareness campaign uses the web address of the Action Plan for Jobs as a landing page for those interested in using the Government's online SME tool which helps explain what supports one might qualify for. The campaign used business representative groups like SFA, ISME and Chambers Ireland, as well as experienced and young entrepreneurs in the advertising to raise awareness of the supports available. In 2016, there were payments totalling €13,779.83 in relation to this campaign, which was a carryover from 2015. There was no additional expenditure in 2016.