Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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125. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of Enterprise Ireland jobs created per county in 2017, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22776/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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On 3 January 2018, Enterprise Ireland 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, Enterprise Ireland supported client companies employed 209,338 people. 19,332 new jobs were created by Enterprise Ireland backed companies in 2017.

We are seeing growth in traditional industry sectors such as construction and manufacturing as well as in the Digital Technology and Life Sciences sectors. These innovative companies are located across the entire country providing quality jobs in every county.

Job creation was evenly spread across the country, with every county seeing job increases in EI supported firms. 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).

The following table breaks down by county the jobs created in 2017 in Enterprise Ireland supported companies.