Up to 70,000 jobs have been created under the Government's action plan for jobs, Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton claimed yesterday, as US ecommerce giant Amazon announced it would create a further 300 jobs at its new Dublin operation.
He was speaking at the publication of the latest quarterly report on the plan, which evaluates the hundreds of targets and initiatives in the plan.
Mr Bruton acknowledged that with unemployment at 11 per cent “we have a long way to go.”
“But people can have confidence that the plan is working, and if we stick with it we can ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated,” he said.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the plan was en route to deliver 100,000 jobs by 2016.
He also noted that 800 new jobs had been announced by multinationals here in the past week and that the budget would help build on the “strong flow of job creation”.
“The action plan for jobs is about rebuilding the economy brick by brick, reform by reform, to get back to sustainable, enterprise-led growth.”
In the third quarter this year some 88 of the 100 measures specified were delivered.
Among the measures announced were new supports for start-ups, including the doubling of funding to them from business angel investment.
US investment
Amazon said it would create 300 jobs at its new Dublin operation in Ballsbridge, bringing its total Irish workforce up to 1,700.
The ecommerce giant is currently building two additional floors at Burlington Plaza to accomodate the staff.
The roles, including data centre technicians, software engineers and customer support staff, will be hired over the next two years.
The move comes as Amazon celebrates its 10th anniversary in Dublin, noting that it has invested €1.5 billion in Ireland over this time.
"Amazon has been an active contributor to the Dublin technology community for a decade and during this time we have been extremely impressed with the creativity and strong technical talent available in the country," said Amazon's chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, making the announcement.
Dr Vogels, who was in Dublin to present at Web Summit 2015, said a key element of Amazon’s Irish operations is its technical nature, with the company’s Irish operations responsible for the engineering of new technologies that support a number of the company’s businesses, including its retail operations, devices and its cloud computing division Amazon Web Services.
“The jobs here will be part of building the future of IT,” he said, noting that the company hired a specific type of engineer with a “great customer focus”.
