News & Events

Bruton welcomes continuing fall in unemployment but cautions of major challenges ahead

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD today welcomed the publication of the official CSO monthly unemployment figures, showing a fall in the unemployment rate to 8.4%, and a monthly drop of 3,700 in the number of people unemployed. The figures also show that there are 25,700 fewer people unemployed today compared to 12 months ago.

Speaking today, Minister Bruton said:

“The key to being able to do everything we want to do as a Government – whether in housing, healthcare, or any of the other crucial issues that face Irish people – is continuing the progress on job-creation. Over the past four years since we launched the Action Plan for Jobs we have seen consistent, steady progress in this area, with unemployment falling from 15.1% to 8.4% but there is no room for complacency.

“There are many significant risks to our continuing recovery – including Brexit, conflict and instability in the Middle East, oil prices, slowdown in China – and yesterday we saw the EU Commission downgrade its forecasts for EU growth.

 All of this highlights the need to continue making changes in the areas over which we have control – in particular, to do everything possible to improve our international competitiveness. If we are successful in this we will be able to keep the economy strong so that we can make changes and improve services to make people’s lives a little better and a little easier”.

For further information contact Press Office, D/Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Ph: 6312200 or press.office@djei.ie