Enterprise Ireland has welcomed the publication of the Action Plan for Jobs 2016 by the Government which aims to create 50,000 extra jobs in 2016.  Following a record year for job creation by its client companies with over 10,000 net new jobs created in 2015, the agency is fully committed to continuing to support Irish businesses to grow and create new jobs to meet the targets set out in the Action Plan.

As part of this new phase of the Action Plan for Jobs process, 200,000 net additional jobs are targeted by 2020, which would bring the total numbers of people at work to 2.18million.

The 2016 plan outlines 304 actions which will be implemented this year by 16 Departments and over 60 Agencies.

Among the headline actions included in this year’s plan are:

• All Government transactions with business will be available online by 2017, a move which will affect 370 Government transactions with 185,000 businesses across the country
• Double the intellectual property outputs from business
• Following the successful rollout of the Regional Jobs plans, further actions to support regional jobs growth supported by €530million in funding
• A step-up in skills supply, including a single Government web portal to highlight job opportunities to returning emigrants and a new National Skills Strategy
• 13,000 new jobs in Enterprise Ireland companies and 16,000 new jobs in IDA companies in 2016
• A series of measures to double the jobs impact from start-ups, including support for 185 high-potential and early-stage start-ups and 4000 jobs from the Local Enterprise Offices in 2016
• Mentoring and management development programmes for 1300 Irish companies in 2016
• €150million in new funding for R&D from Horizon 2020, and €600million in R&D investment annually from multinational companies
• A National Clustering Initiative – while clustering is an important strength of the Irish economy, particularly at regional level, research suggests that this can be significantly strengthened with specific initiatives
• Agri-food – establish a Centre for Consumer Insights and a Meat Technology Centre to support food innovation
• Measures to target jobs from new sectors including the bio-economy and the audio-visual sector

Enterprise Ireland CEO Julie Sinnamon said: “The launch of the Action Plan for Jobs 2016 is a very important strategy which sets out a series of targeted actions across a range of industry sectors and Government agencies to support the creation of 50,000 new jobs in 2016.  Enterprise Ireland’s strategy of supporting Irish business to start, innovate and scale in order to build an indigenous engine of growth for the economy, will help our client companies to create more jobs and support the Action Plan for Job’s objectives to develop a sustainable economy based on enterprise, exports and innovation”.