An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny together with Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation, Mary Mitchell O’Connor today launched the Action Plan for Jobs 2017 at the offices of NDRC, the early stage investor in tech companies, in the Digital Hub.
The target is to support the creation of 200,000 net additional jobs by 2020. There are nearly 190,000 more people employed now compared to when the first Action Plan was launched in 2012, surpassing the original target of an additional 100,000 jobs by 2016.
According to CSO figures announced on Tuesday, the monthly unemployment figure for January 2017 is down to 7.1% from 8.5% in January 2016, the lowest since 2008. Employment is up by an average 10.6% across the country and over 2 million people are now at work.
The Government claims immediate steps are being taken to address the impact some firms are already experiencing as a result of Brexit. These include €3 million extra for Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland to recruit an additional 39 and 9 staff respectively to be deployed at home and in overseas offices to grow Ireland's exports and attract investment, an increased number of trade missions to drive export diversification, along with the specific measures in Budget 2017 to help enterprise prepare for the immediate future.
Speaking at today’s launch, the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny said, "We will focus on getting the basics right including improving our competitiveness performance, ensuring our skills pipeline is aligned to labour market needs, driving innovation and promoting entrepreneurship and ensuring finance is available at competitive cost to support and underpin growth."
He added, "We need to build our trading resilience and we will help our ambitious enterprises diversify their markets, with a significant increase in Ministerial-led trade missions in 2017."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
