THE GOVERNMENT SAYS it will focus on growing the domestic economy in 2014 but has set itself a target and says will directly support the creation of 30,500 jobs this year.

Speaking at the launch the ‘Action Plan for Jobs 2014′, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that local entrepreneurship is to be the focus of job creation this year:

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.

The plan seeks to create a total of 30,500 direct new jobs during 2014 with the support of the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and 31 new Local Enterprise Offices that will be opened.

The Governments own figures show that 58,000 new jobs were created in Ireland in 2013.

Without going into specifics, An Taoiseach said that he did not want to see the cost of employing people increase.

IBEC earlier this month called for income tax cuts saying that businesses could not afford to increase wages, something Kenny did not rule out. In today’s speech in Dublin today however, Kenny was giving nothing away on income tax cuts.

“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,” he said.

IBEC have reacted to the today’s announcement saying they welcome the plan but that there are “significant gaps” in it.

“If we want to seriously tackle unemployment we should be looking at reducing tax, improving regulation, and investing much more in infrastructure projects,” according to IBEC chief economist, Fergal O’Brien.

Action plan 2014

The plan say that the Government will carry out 385 separate actions this year to boost job creation.

Some of what the Government committed itself to today:

• 31 new Local Enterprise Offices to drive start-ups across the country.
• More staff for the IDA overseas which they say will lead to 10,000 new jobs.
• To support 2,000 ‘micro and small businesses’ to trade online in two years.
• New measures to support productivity in Irish research and development.
• A county-based public competition to find the best entrepreneur in Ireland with €2 million in total funding for awards.
• An entrepreneurial PhD programme to train Science Foundation Ireland scientists to launch their own businesses.
• A successor to the National Spatial Strategy to develop employment equally across the regions.

Earlier today, the latest figures from the CSO showed that there are currently 253,200 people without a job living in the country with the rate down to 12.1 per cent.

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