Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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150. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of Enterprise Ireland supported jobs by county; the number for Dublin city, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and south Dublin in 2015, 2016 and 2017; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2728/18]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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151. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of Enterprise Ireland clients on a county basis; the number in the case of Dublin between Dublin city, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and south Dublin in 2015, 2016 and 2017; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2729/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 150 and 151 together.

On 3 January 2018, Enterprise Ireland (EI) announced its 2017 end year results. The 2017 performance was strong, reporting the highest employment in the history of the agency, the highest net job creation in the history of the agency and the lowest number of job losses since 1998.

In 2017 EI supported client companies employed 209,338 people. 19,332 new jobs were created by EI backed companies in 2017.

This represents a net increase of 10,309 jobs for 2017, taking account of job losses. The job creation figures are up on 2016, despite the uncertainty that Irish businesses faced in 2017 in the context of Brexit.

Job creation was evenly spread across the country, with every county seeing job increases. Two thirds (64%) of the new jobs created were outside of Dublin. The West, Mid-West and North West saw the largest level of increases at 7% in 2017.

Enterprise Ireland attributes this strong performance by Irish businesses to the continuing growth of an entrepreneurial climate for start-ups, allied to strong jobs growth in the Construction (8% increase), Engineering (8% increase), Lifesciences (8% increase), Digital Technology (6% increase), Electronics (6% increase), Food (4% increase) and ICT sectors (5% increase).

2017 was the first year of EI’s strategy, Build Scale, Expand Reach 2017 – 2020. This Strategy is focused on:

- Assisting clients to create 60,000 new jobs by 2020 while sustaining the existing record level of jobs;

- Growing the annual exports of client companies by €5bn to €26bn per annum;

- Increasing the level of spend made by client companies in the Irish economy by €4bn to €27bn per annum by 2020; and

- Inspiring more Irish owned companies to have global ambition.

I am committed to work closely with Enterprise Ireland to drive this Strategy, to ensure that it continues to support companies in urban and rural areas to start, innovate, increase our exports and remain competitive in international markets, now and into the future. In recent months, with the support of my Department, EI has launched new measures to strengthen the rural and regional economy and to provide quicker access to innovation funding for exporting companies. This includes the new €60m Regional Enterprise Development Fund and a new fast-track Agile Innovation Fund.

Table 1 presents employment in Enterprise Ireland supported companies by county. Table 2 presentsemployment in Enterprise Ireland supported companies in each of the Dublin Burrows.

Table 1: Employment in Enterprise Ireland Supported Companies byCounty

Table 2: Employment in Enterprise Ireland Supported Companies in eachof the Dublin Burrows

Table 3 presents the number of EI clients on a county basis. Table 4 presents the number of EI clients in each of the four Dublin burrows.

Table3: Number of EI clients on a county basis

Table 4: Number of EI clients in Dublin by Burrow

Data sourced from the Annual Employment Survey 2015, 2016 and 2017.