James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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34. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation her plans to promote County Wexford and the south east for regional development; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6324/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The South East Action Plan for Jobs is the key policy response for supporting employment growth in the South East region, including Wexford, with public and private stakeholders actively engaged in delivering a range of innovative and practical actions set out in the Plan.

The core objective of the Plan is to see a further 25,000 at work in the region, including Wexford, by 2020 and to reduce the unemployment rate to within 1% of the State average.

In keeping with the medium to longer term ambition of the Regional Plans, these plans are not broken down by individual county. Key sectors targeted in the South East as part of the Plan include agri-food, tourism, life sciences, manufacturing, retail and financial and business services. The first progress report on the implementation of the Action Plan has recently been published and shows that good progress is being made.

As a result of a focused collaborative approach and a range of reforms delivered in the region over recent years, the unemployment rate in the region has fallen from a peak of 20.1% in 2012 to the current rate of 10.4%.

The numbers on the Live Register in County Wexford have fallen by over 1,800 in the past year.

Since 2012, the South East has had the fastest rate of jobs growth, in percentage terms, of any region in the country. 215,000 are now at work in the South East - an increase of 33,800 since 2012.

While the current unemployment rate is still too high, these figures demonstrate that the overall trend is one of steady improvement. 

In addition, both IDA and Enterprise Ireland are placing extra emphasis on regional development in their current strategies. IDA is targeting an uplift of 30-40% in investments in all regions outside Dublin by 2019.