‘Aggressive’ plans to create jobs

Enda Kenny has promised to aggressively tackle unemployment this year and has ordered each of his ministers to come up with individual employment targets.

The Taoiseach said a special Cabinet meeting on jobs and job creation will be held later this month where each minister will be expected to outline their own specific job creation plans.

In an interview, he said the dedicated ministerial plans would be modelled on the quarterly action plan for jobs, which is overseen by Jobs Minister Richard Bruton and which was launched at the start of the year with the aim of creating 100,000 jobs by 2016.

In a special briefing for journalists, he said: “I’m not happy obviously with the level of unemployment and weak growth is unacceptable.

“Though in the context of a comparative sense with other European countries, there has been solid progress. The Government are going to focus in a very aggressive way on what we can do to restore jobs and income growth for 2013.”

The Government wanted to build on stability by focusing on job creation, he said, which was a matter leaders regularly talked about at European Council meetings.

“One of the things we’re going to do in January is have a special Cabinet meeting on jobs and job creation.”

The meeting will also consider elements of the budget intended to help small and medium enterprises, as announced by Michael Noonan, the finance minister, including his 10-point tax-reform plan for businesses.

Mr Kenny added: “We also want to look at big-ticket reforms that can make a quick impact on the job market, including obviously more generous and easy-to-access subsidy for the employers who hire [the] unemployed. We hope that can be delivered through the finance bill in February.”

The latest figures show that 432,3000 people are claiming unemployment benefit.