British-Irish Council Summit

The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, TD will attend the British Irish Council (BIC) Summit being hosted by Jersey today. The Taoiseach will be accompanied by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan, TD.

The BIC was established under the Good Friday Agreement to promote the special relationships between the eight Member Administrations in these islands. The Jersey Summit will be the twenty first to be held since the inaugural meeting of the BIC in 1999.

The main focus of the Summit will be a discussion by Member Administrations on youth employment and the creative industries and developments in their respective economies.

The Taoiseach will give an update the to BIC on his discussions in Paris on Tuesday with European leaders, where measures were announced to improve Europe’s high youth unemployment rate, over the next two years.

Following on from the recent web summit that emphasised the growing demand for digital skills, the government will focus on the enormous potential of the digital economy, as upskilling our young jobseekers to fill in demand digital roles is a win -win for the EU economy and Ireland.

A Communiqué will issue from the BIC at the conclusion of the Summit.