Update: Job Creation and Foreign Direct Investment – Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation 25th November, 2014

To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which job creation targets continue to be met throughout the services sector indigenously and through Foreign Direct Investment; the degree to which innovation has played a part in such job creation; if EU assistance has been available to individual firms; his expectations in this regard for the future; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

For ORAL answer on Tuesday, 25th November, 2014.

Ref No:     44354/14      
 

Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation (Mr Bruton TD)

Under the Action Plan for Jobs we have set a target of 100,000 extra at work by 2016. Individual sectoral targets have not been set. However, areas of notable potential within the services sector such as Tourism, Software Services, Business Services, Retail have been identified and structured measures put in place to assist their development. It is clear that extra jobs in some of these areas are making a major contribution to the overall increase of 68,700 extra at work since the APJ was launched.

The agencies of my Department focus particularly on services with export potential. Among Irish owned enterprises, employment in services increased by 5,188 between 2011 and 2013, an increase of 8.4%. Among IDA enterprises employment in services increased by 9,730 in the same period, an increase of 13.8%. Services have dominated export growth in recent years.

Our agencies, including SFI, have strong programmes to support innovation among the enterprises which they support. They range from innovation vouchers to support first time R&D to deeper collaborations in Technology Centres or Research Centres.

Ireland is a stand-out nation among developed economies in terms of the levels of innovation in services, not least as exemplified in the share of business R&D that is accounted for by services businesses, equating to over two-thirds of such expenditure. Evidence, from both the EU and internationally, shows that the Government’s strategy of accelerating the economic and societal return on our STI investment is paying off. Globally, we are ranked 9 ^th  in the European Commission’s 2014 Innovation Union Scoreboard.

The main areas of EU assistance available to services firms are in the funding for research and innovation, with a budget of almost €80 billion covering the next seven years Horizon 2020, and the Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME). Ireland has set an ambitious target of drawing down up to €1.25bn in funding from Horizon 2020 over the period 2014-2020. The new COSME programme will run from 2014 to 2020, with an overall budget of €2.23bn and is particularly relevant for services businesses seeking to internationalise for the first time. My Department has policy responsibility for COSME policy issues and liaison with the EU Commission and Enterprise Ireland hosts the Enterprise Europe Network Ireland (EEN) which is a ‘one-stop shop’ for the business needs of SMEs in the EU and beyond.  The EEN office provides enterprises with information and a range of quality and free-of-charge business support services to make them more competitive and to trade internationally.