merrion street

Minister Bruton, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Joan Burton and Minister of State Ged Nash

Job-creation is the Government’s No.1 priority, the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Jobs said today as they published the Action Plan for Jobs tenth progress report.

The report was published as recent figures show that the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since early 2009, and jobs continue to be created at a rapid rate, although there remains a long way to go.

The Government also announced today that a National Health Innovation Hub with the potential to support hundreds of new companies and thousands of new jobs will be established in 2014.

The National Health Innovation Hub will be a win-win for businesses, the health system – and most importantly, for job-creation:

• Innovative Irish healthcare companies will for the first time be able to easily gain access to the health system to test their products and services, increasing the chances of developing commercial ideas and creating jobs
• The health system will be able to gain easy access to innovative companies who can provide solutions to the problems that it faces, making it cheaper and easier to deliver better health-care to more patients

The Hub will aim to support Irish businesses in the crucial pharmaceutical, medical devices and ICT sectors – which together account for over €140billion in annual exports.

The report showed that 123 out of 144 measures earmarked for completion during Q2 2014 have been implemented.

Among the other Q2 measures delivered are:

• Launch of national Trading Online scheme, to help Irish retailers to win more business from the €6billion that Irish consumers spend online every year
• New measures to make it easier for SMEs to access procurement opportunities
• Started recruiting the 35 new staff as part of the IDA ‘Winning Abroad’ scheme which aims to place new IDA staff in overseas markets and create 10,000 additional jobs

Read the Second Progress Report

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