State agencies aim to create 30,000 jobs

ALMOST 30,000 jobs will be created next year by the state’s enterprise agencies.

The IDA aims to create 9,800 direct and 6,800 indirect jobs next year through foreign direct investments while Enterprise Ireland’s target is for 6,300 direct jobs and 4,400 spin-off jobs through export-led Irish firms.

Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keeffe said these jobs will be sustainable and high- quality and will underpin the country’s return to economic growth and drive “fresh levels of innovation across the whole economy”.

Next year, the Government will invest €570 million in science, technology, innovation and enterprise.

“With these funds, Science Foundation Ireland will maintain 29 top-class research centres and continue to work with over 400 industry partners,” said Mr O’Keeffe. Enterprise Ireland will help around 1,200 firms with research and innovation activities and support 85 high-potential start-up firms, rising to 100 by 2015.

IDA Ireland also said it will continue to attract new investments, nearly half of which will be research and development-based, this year.

Mr O’Keeffe said he would continue to implement the recommendations of the Innovation Taskforce which aims to make Ireland the best place in Europe to turn research into jobs and to start and scale-up an innovative firm.

“The Government wants Ireland to be the home of scalable small Irish firms and the best place in Europe for research-intensive multinationals to partner with clusters of smaller firms,” said Mr O’Keeffe.

The Government recently gave a commitment to retaining Ireland’s low corporation tax rate, which is set at 12.5%.

Mr O’Keeffe said that the foreign direct investment (FDI) pipeline for Ireland’s two largest markets, Britain and the US, is strong in the near term and it is important that Ireland retains confidence in the enterprise economy, which is showing very encouraging signs of recovery.

He said FDI generates more jobs per head of population in Ireland than in any other country and Ireland was the only country in the eurozone, bar Germany, to record an increase in export activity in the first half of this year.

“Ireland’s 12.5% corporation tax rate is a vital draw for foreign direct investment (FDI) and it remains a key component of our industrial policy,” he said.

Internationally, FDI was down 30% last year but in Ireland it fell by just 4%.