Recovery must start to take hold in our Towns and Villages – Minister Coffey

Fine Gael Waterford Minister Paudie Coffey TD has spoken about the importance of making sure the recovery is not confined to major urban centres.

“I was delighted to welcome the government’s Regional Action Plan for Jobs this year as it is vital that we embrace the hard work that has got us to this point of the recovery and make sure that this recovery is not confined to the cities.”

The Minister spoke specifically about the importance of job creation for Co. Waterford:

“Waterford is finally starting to recover due to the hard work and sacrifice of people and because of coherent and good policy decisions by government. I now want to see this recovery benefit people across the county. I am hopeful that we will start seeing job creation and economic recovery extending further into our regions and taking hold in our towns and villages.

The Minister stressed that stable government is the key to continue and strong economic recovery.

“The government has identified where problems were holding back recovery and have acted to change this through the Regional Action Plan for Jobs, setting out €250 million to make sure that economic recovery spreads to rural Ireland. The Irish unemployment rate has fallen to 10% in March 2015; this is down from a peak of 15.1% in February 2012 and in that period some 90,000 full-time jobs have been added in the economy.”

Recently, IDA Ireland has completed a new purpose built facility in Waterford city, and the Regional Action Plan allocates another facility build over the next 5 years which is great news for Waterford.

“Just last week, I met with Anne Marie Tierney Le Roux, South East Regional IDA manager, to discuss ways in which we can maximise opportunities for job creation in Co. Waterford. I am hopeful that we can see the economic recovery spread to towns in rural Waterford. I will continue to work to see this come to fruition.”

—ENDS—