Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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23. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if areas continually affected by low income and deprivation are targeted in strategic planning and promotion of job creation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49516/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Supporting job creation via the Action Plan for Jobs is one of the Government's key instruments to reduce regional disparities in terms of income level and deprivation. This Government’s goal is to have an additional 200,000 people at work by 2020, including 135,000 jobs outside of Dublin. Since the first Action Plan for Jobs was launched in early 2012:

- There are over 225,000 more people at work bringing total employment in the State to almost 2,063,000 in the first half of the year;

- The number of unemployed fell by 180,400, a 56% reduction, leading to a reduction of the unemployment rate from 15.2% at the beginning for 2012 to 6.0 % in October 2017; and

- In 2016, the Agencies under my Department's remit - LEOs, EI and IDA Ireland - supported the net creation of almost 24,800 jobs.  Two thirds of new jobs created by EI supported companies and over half of those created by IDA supported companies were outside Dublin in 2016.

Unemployment is decreasing in all regions. As set out in our enterprise strategy, Enterprise 2025, we want to progressively address the gaps between the potential and the performance of our regions and ensure that the unemployment rate in each region is within 1% of the State average. This has been achieved in 6 of our eight regions, with good progress also being made in the Midland and the South East regions.

In addition to the cross-government initiatives in the Action Plan for Jobs, the reduction of regional disparities is being pursued with the Regional Action Plans for Jobs (RAPJ). Developed over the last two years, their objective is to mobilise the regional economic development partners in the eight former NUTS 3 regions around the country to have a further 10 to 15 per cent at work in each region by 2020. Each Regional Plan is being driven and overseen by a Regional Implementation Committee, led in most cases by senior industrialists from the Regions and good progress is being made.

The National Planning Framework being developed by the Minister of Housing, Planning and Local Government will also play a role in addressing regional disparities: it will set out a national overarching vision and expectations around development and growth for Ireland over the coming decades. Strategic long term planning that integrates enterprise, spatial and infrastructure investment planning offers the potential to create places of quality that businesses will want to invest in, and that people will want to live, work, and learn in.

In developing the annual Action Plan for Jobs, we have consistently sought to ensure that we are supporting the creation of good quality jobs and that individuals are incentivised and rewarded to take-up those jobs and thereby ‘making work pay’. This Action Plan for Jobs 2018, will focus on new and more strategic actions that will have a significant impact on sustainable job creation. and contribute to creating the right environment for continued job growth and retention right across the country.