By Business & Finance 
The Government will today launch Enterprise 2025, the 10-year jobs and enterprise strategy aimed at ending the cycle of boom-bust and delivering sustainable, enterprise-based jobs growth.
The new strategy is to target 221,300 additional jobs over next five years, bringing the employment rate to its highest in history of the State.
In 2012 the Government published its first Action Plan for Jobs, targeting the creation of 100,000 extra jobs by 2016 – a target was achieved 21 months ahead of schedule.
Speaking about the strategy, Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD said: “Enterprise 2025 is a blueprint on how to rebuild a sustainable economy, sector by sector. It marks a definitive end to the boom and bust cycle embraced by previous Governments. While recovery is underway, it is still fragile and can be undone with the wrong policies that will take the country in the wrong direction. Our strategy is to keep the recovery going by building up all sectors in the economy and to ensure that progress is balanced across the country. With these plans we expect to see unemployment in all regions to be within 1% of the national average in every region by 2020. A strong economy with full employment that supports vibrant public services for our people is within our grasp if we make the right choices.”
Tánaiste Joan Burton TD added: “I attach singular importance to the objective of helping people back to work – because fairly paid and secure work is the single best protection against poverty, the single best way to a better life. Twice in my lifetime we have seen the chance for sustainable job-creation destroyed by bad policies. Now once again we have the chance to deliver the jobs growth that can support the quality of life for our people that we all aspire to. By 2020 we aim to have more people at work than at any time in the history of the State, with over 220,000 extra jobs created by then. In order to deliver on this we will have to continually reform our programmes, work hard under the bonnet within Government, and form new partnerships between Government and enterprise.”
