Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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235. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of Enterprise Ireland clients in Dublin and by county; the number in Dublin city, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and south County Dublin; the number in Cork city and County Cork in each of the years 2014 to 2017, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14608/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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On 3^rdJanuary 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.

Table 1presents the number of EI clients on a county basis. Table 2presents the number of EI clients in each of the four Dublin boroughs.

Table 1: Number of EI client companies on a county basis

Source: Corresponding Year's Annual Employment survey results 2014-2017

Table 2: Number of EI client companies in Dublin by Borough

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.

Note: re: 2014 Dublin Borough Breakdown. Please note that Enterprise Ireland’s database records the current number of clients. Therefore, a retrospective breakdown of clients (e.g. for a specific year is not possible with the system and the required data can only be provided for those years for which the data was extracted and saved at that time). Enterprise Ireland broke the Dublin Borough data down in this manner in 2015, 2016 and 2017. However, the 2014 data was not saved using this format (i.e. with City & borough breakdowns). Using 2015 records Enterprise Ireland is able to provide the breakdown by borough for 2,078 of the 2,081 plants recorded in Dublin in2014. Between 2014 and 2015 three companies previously located in Dublin relocated to Meath (2) and Waterford(1).

Retrospective data broken down by Cork City & County is not available - as per above please note that Enterprise Ireland’s database recordsthe current number of clients and their current location (i.e. as of 27th March2018). Therefore, a retrospective breakdown of clients and where they were located in a given year, is not possible with the system and the required data can only be provided where the data was extracted and saved at that time.