Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you to our hosts, the Wayra Academy.
I had the pleasure of opening this space in May 2012 and I understand many young entrepreneurs have gone on to launch many successful companies from here.
It is now two years since we first introduced the Action Plan for Jobs strategy to help Ireland get back to work.
At that time, we were still in the throes of the global economic storm and were locked into the EU/IMF bailout, and the road to recovery and new job creation looked distant.
Since then we have put jobs at the top of the Government agenda and today we find ourselves in a very different environment to what we faced in 2011 and 2012.
The economy is now creating 1,200 new jobs a week… 58,000 in the past year. The CSO will release its latest jobs figures at 11am.
But at 12.3% the rate of unemployment is still unacceptable.
We recognise that too many people around the country still have yet to see any evidence of recovery in their own lives.
This is why the Government has designated 2014 to be the “year for jobs”.
Exiting the bailout was not an end in itself. We must use this freedom to create a sustainable economic recovery, to create more jobs and improve living standards.
Just as we had a plan to exit the bail-out, we now have a clear plan to guide the economy to better times.
A plan based on enterprise, not speculation.
It has two connected central targets:
First, to reduce the Government deficit to under 3% of GDP by 2015 and plans to eliminate it altogether by 2018.
Second, to replace all 330,000 jobs lost during the recession with new jobs by 2020.
This is where the Action Plan for Jobs comes in.
Since we began this process, in 2012, we have implemented over 1,100 job-supporting measures. This represents an implementation rate of 95% and the brick-by-brick rebuilding of a competitive, successful, and sustainable economy to replace the ruins we inherited three years ago.
This is the first Action Plan since exiting the bailout and it contains 385 actions involving the entire public service.
The 2014 Action Plan has a strong focus on the domestic economy, improving competitiveness, and supporting our entrepreneurs and smaller firms with new Local Enterprise Offices.
Maintaining and improving on our recent competitiveness gains will also be critical in 2014.
We must be very careful about doing anything which would add to the cost of employing people and make it more difficult to create the jobs we so badly need.
Creating a competitive business environment that supports an increase in exports is essential in ensuring Ireland achieves growth and, crucially, gets more people back to work.
In the 2013 Action Plan for Jobs we introduced a number of Disruptive Reforms; high impact, cross-cutting measures with the potential to have a significant impact on job creation.
We are aiming to substantially progress these reforms in 2014 to make a big impact on their respective industries.
The JobsPlus initiative, launched in 2013, has already proven to be particularly impactful.
For this year we are also putting a renewed strong focus on: Developing Entrepreneurship; Winning Abroad; and a National Step Change in Manufacturing.
And we will also target 2,000 micro and small businesses over a two year period to support them to engage in online trading, building on a successful trial undertaken in Dublin.
Access to business finance remains as critical as ever. In 2014 we will increase new lending to small business, and increase participation in Government-sponsored schemes; and by raising the level of awareness amongst small business and entrepreneurs of the different business supports available.
Getting our domestic economy back to normal service is essential if we are to get people back to work.
As such we will place a strong focus on the construction and property sector, retail, and social enterprise where there is potential for significant job creation with the correct supporting measures.
Conclusion
Exiting the Troika Programme is only the end of the beginning of our plan for Ireland’s recovery.
We are now moving in the right direction but we have to press on with job creation, responsible management of our public finances and the reform of our financial sector.
There can be no let up in our efforts until we are back to full employment. That is what prosperity will look like to the people of Ireland.
I will now ask the Tánaiste and then the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to say a few words on their priority areas for 2014 under the Plan.
ENDS.