Richard Bruton risks over-egging job figures and FDI targets

The best news at the latest Action Plan for Jobs unveiling came early – with the announcement that it is to be the last of the eight regional jobs plans published in recent months.

Ministers, and the support teams who do most of the heavy lifting, must be exhausted with the recurring delivery of very similar proposals in very similar terms to largely similar audiences over what seems to be the past five years.

New jobs are always welcome but as the election looms, voters will be more tuned into delivery than promise – at least on this front.

For the finale, Minister Richard Bruton presented an ambitious package of targets for the capital.

The topline figure is for 66,000 new jobs in the city between now and the end of 2018. While the Minister referenced the 90,000 jobs lost in the city during the years of austerity, 64,000 posts have already been created since the first Action Plan for Jobs in 2012, the Minister said.

However, that was over a longer period and one presumes that much of the low-hanging fruit has already been harvested in terms of new job creation as the recovery kicked in. Repeating that performance on the employment front in a shorter period of time is certainly challenging, if not impossible.

But likely to attract more attention is the proposal to double the level of foreign direct investment into the greater Dublin area.

Ambitious? Without a doubt. Dublin has fared well in attracting substantial foreign investment over recent years. But this target is likely to raise awkward questions for the Government.

There is already considerable disquiet in parts of the country that Dublin grabs a disproportionate share of incoming projects. Ministers are regularly at pains to point out how much effort goes into securing FDI for the regions. If Dublin is to double its FDI project numbers, how can the regions hope to secure what they would see as a more equitable portion of the investment cake?