The number of people out of work in Donegal has almost halved, a local Fine Gael TD said today.
Minister Joe McHugh was commenting on the latest live register figures which show a 43% drop in the unemployment rate in the county between January 2012 and last month.
“Back then the live register figure for Donegal stood at 21,251. Today it is 12,280. And over the past year – from January 2017 until last month, there was a 14% fall in the live register numbers with almost 2,000 more people in jobs over the past 12 months.”
The Donegal TD went on to say there are 48,100 more people at work in our country since this time last year.
“Our enterprise-based economy is now creating 38 new jobs every week in Donegal – in the past year nine out of every 10 new jobs nationally were created outside the Dublin area.
“The Action Plan for Rural Development is committed to ensuring that the economic recovery is felt throughout Ireland including here in Donegal and the creation of rural jobs is vital in order to achieve this.
“I am very pleased to see this strong level of job creation delivered for Donegal by Government-backed companies. Our vision and support for the Letterkenny-Derry city region is helping to drive growth here.”
Minister McHugh added: “Fine Gael’s priority is to support companies here in Donegal to continue to build on this strong job creation performance.
“The National Planning framework will be unveiled in the coming weeks; this is the first real joined–up plan and investment strategy to transform our country over the decades to come – showing that we have an evidence-based, coordinated plan of what kind of country and society we want and how to get there.
“Our regional Action Plan for Jobs is an excellent example of government agencies like Enterprise Ireland, local authorities, the Local Enterprise Offices and businesses working together to tackle regional issues. These results mark another step in the right direction for our regional plans.
“Job creation was evenly spread across the country, with every county seeing job increases. We are moving towards full employment and we will ensure that all parts of Ireland can share in our prosperity and economic growth, including here in Donegal, with 1,960 new jobs in the past year. We have more to do and I am confident of even more jobs here in the coming months.”
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