I am delighted to be before the committee again. We had our informal meeting last summer when the committee commenced its work. It is a pleasure to be here to present my Department's statement of strategy for 2025 to 2028 and to set out how the Department supports our Ministers to deliver on the programme for Government commitments, to consolidate our strong economic performance of recent years and to position Ireland for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
We are now in the starting point of 2026. We are coming at this from a position of relative strength. The most recent Central Statistics Office, CSO, labour force data shows that 2.83 million people were in employment at the end of 2025. That is an increase of 56,700 on 2024. Participation rates are at record levels and we have full employment in all regions.
On the employment side, the pipeline for indigenous enterprise and foreign direct investment remains strong. Last year saw the number of jobs in client companies supported by the enterprise development agencies of my Department, including Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and the local enterprise offices, LEOs, reach a record of 585,000 direct employment across the economy, with a similar number indirectly employed. Enterprise Ireland’s end of year results for 2025 show total employment reached 232,425, with 12,600 new jobs created last year. Notably, 69% of those new jobs were created outside Dublin across a range of sectors from food nutrition and agritech to software, engineering, health and medical technologies and artificial intelligence, AI. These are precisely the areas where our strategy emphasises digital transformation and innovation and we are focusing for growth for the future. Similarly in terms of IDA Ireland and attracting inward investment, last year again was a record year with 323 investments achieved. This is up 38% on 2024 with over 15,000 jobs expected over the coming years from those approvals. Total employment in IDA companies is now at a record level of 312,400. Despite all the external challenges, Ireland remains a globally attractive location for enterprise and innovation.
At the small business level, I wish to mention the work of our 31 local enterprise offices and the companies supported by them, which are companies with up to 50 employees. They created 7,261 new jobs in 2025. For the first time, employment in client companies of the local enterprise offices reached over 40,000 and 82% of those new jobs are outside Dublin.
On the tourism area, which transferred to my Department last year, the latest figures from the CSO indicate that numbers and revenue increased by 30% in December, an encouraging indicator that adds near term weight to our long-term policy direction. This is the starting point for our new strategy. Investment and innovation remain strong. Our enterprise sector's ambition is real. Our trade and tourism are diversifying and the labour market is robust. Our task for the coming years is to consolidate these gains to realise our vision, as set out in our statement of strategy, of making Ireland the world's leading location to work, do business and visit.
In the context of developing our statement of strategy for 2025 to 2028, we will take our guidance from the Programme for Government: Securing Ireland's Future, which set out a clear direction for our statement of strategy and emphasised that further developing Ireland's enterprise base remains a key focus, from backing small businesses and start-ups to scaling firms and enhancing foreign direct investment. There was a strong commitment in the programme for Government to reducing business costs, simplification and effective regulation. We must also secure access to finance and investment, including in infrastructure, to help businesses to succeed. We continue to create and grow quality jobs and keep a laser focus on competitiveness, skills and innovation. While the programme for Government is a cornerstone of our new strategy, we also listened to our stakeholders while developing it. We ran a public consultation process and invited submissions from the enterprise forum, which we support, the retail forum, key social partners including IBEC, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, Irish SME Association, ISME, the chambers of commerce, regional assemblies, our offices, regulatory and enterprise bodies and Departments.
We have set out six goals to guide our actions and to realise the opportunities that are there to deliver on quality jobs and prosperity over the period to 2028. There is a key focus on driving a competitive, resilient and sustainable economy that supports enterprise, tourism and employment across all our regions. Our first goal is a clear focus on driving competitiveness, sustainability and innovation. As we discussed previously with the committee, competitiveness is the foundation of improvements in living standards. Under this goal, we have developed and are delivering on a new whole-of-government action plan for competitiveness and productivity which was published in September. It was developed within the first couple of months of the new Government. With an eye to the future, we are also developing a longer-term enterprise strategy called enterprise 2035, which we hope to bring forward to the Government with the Minister, Deputy Burke, this time next year. It will have that longer-term focus on strategy for jobs and growth. We will also increase our focus on enterprise research and development, scaling our technology centres around the country and advancing digital adoption, including AI and cybersecurity, so that 90% of all business reach basic digital literacy and intensity by 2030. We will step up our focus on decarbonisation, including implementing an offshore wind industrial strategy, leveraging the opportunities from the EU net-zero industry Act and driving growth in green manufacturing and supply chains in Ireland.
Following on from a focus on competitiveness, our second goal is very much on high-quality jobs and increasing productivity to drive prosperity and higher living standards. This also requires a sustained investment in innovation, productivity, digitalisation and upskilling at firm level. To deliver on high-quality jobs, it is essential that we, working with other Departments, activate those who are outside the labour market, as well as attracting international workers. Economic migration is a key part of the role of my Department and I emphasise that economic migration should not be regarded as a mechanism for importing low-cost labour. Rather, when developed and implemented in a strategic, cross-governmental manner it will allow for the attraction of talent to support enterprise and, critically now, the delivery of public infrastructure and services into the future. More generally, we will continue to work with the social partners to implement the action plan on collective bargaining, which we were very pleased to complete over recent months, as well as working with our newly established employment law review group to ensure employment rights frameworks are modern, proportionate and enforceable. We will also continue to support and strengthen the work of the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court, the Low Pay Commission and the Health and Safety Authority, which fall within our Department's remit. I am happy to talk about those later.
Our third goal is to strengthen and support tourism and Irish based enterprises, particularly SMEs, to start, scale and compete internationally. As the committee will be aware, tourism has transferred to my Department and the Government agreed a new tourism strategy and policy statement before Christmas, with 71 actions. It is very much focused on supporting SMEs in the tourism sector right across the country to innovate, grow and prosper. The new strategy will form the basis for the corporate plans for Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland over the coming years. Working with Enterprise Ireland and the local enterprise offices in every county, we will deliver a regionally balanced entrepreneurial pipeline of companies from start-up to scaling businesses. We will have a particular focus on access to finance, strengthening the SME finance escalator with new mechanisms through Enterprise Ireland to close the financing gap for scaling companies, in addition to what it does already with seed and venture capital; continue to expand the work of MicroFinance Ireland which supports companies below 50 employees; and also working with the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, and the EIB on low-cost, long-term debt finance and, again, the growth and stability loan scheme, which has been a particular success for us. We will also be working to support SMEs through navigating the supports that are available through improvement in the national enterprise hub to ensure the supports that are available are targeted and easy to use.
Our fourth goal, complementing our work in supporting the indigenous enterprise sector, is on supporting inward investment and ensuring we remain at the cutting edge of innovation, supporting IDA to implement its strategy Adapt Intelligently while also having a particular focus on deepening research and development collaboration. Last year, IDA attracted €2.5 billion of R and D investment to the country but we will be broadening that out to include more initiatives including, at EU level, involvement in what are called important projects of common European interest, IPCEIs, delivering on the IDA's regional property programme and Next Generation Sites, which we see as a signature initiative for the coming years, and delivering on the potential for green industrial parks around the coast in particular but also through the midlands where we can have a match between the supply and demand for renewable energy into the future.
Our fifth area is very much focused on the regulatory roles we have in the Department and on ensuring we provide measured, certain and innovation-friendly regulation for business, workers and consumers. We will remove unnecessary administrative burdens, strengthening the SME test, which we are now applying right across government, and championing EU-level simplification to boost competitiveness of firms operating in the Single Market. We will also continue to support and strengthen the Corporate Enforcement Authority, the Companies Registration Office, the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority, the Injuries Resolution Board, which is doing so much good work on the insurance area, the National Standards Authority of Ireland; and the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland to effectively deliver on their respective legislative mandates. We will also support the work of the company law review group to ensure company law is fit for purpose and facilitates enterprise and employment. We will continue to promote a digital and AI regulatory framework that balances and encourages innovation while mitigating potential risks for individuals. As the committee members have recently heard in discussions on the pre-legislative scrutiny of the AI and data Bills, we will also progress our work in establishing the national AI office as the central co-ordinating authority for the EU AI Act.
Our sixth goal is to advocate Ireland’s values and strengthen our relationships and influence with the EU and international partners. We will have a central role in the Irish Presidency later this year, including on some key files on European competitiveness, advancing the Single Market, in particular in areas like the terrible ten, simplification and better regulation, and also progressing agreement on the European competitiveness fund, which has over €400 billion as part of the overall multi-annual financial framework. That is one of the most important files for us as part of the Presidency and the work of my Department.
They are the six key goals and the focus of the Department as part of our strategy. As I have mentioned, we are not coming at this from a standing start; we have already made progress in a number of areas on delivering with our Ministers on some of the key elements. As I mentioned, we published the action plan on competitiveness and productivity to tackle structural costs and productivity challenges; we have launched the action plan on market diversification as a whole-of-government action to build resilience in the context of a global trading environment; we have advanced the AI Act implementation model, with my Department as the single point of contact and we are progressing preparations for the AI office; we have established a small-business unit as committed to in the programme for Government and are applying the SME test across government and we are simplifying grants as part of the national enterprise hub. Last year, on the innovation side, we administered and awarded nearly €160 million under the disruptive technologies innovation fund, published the semiconductor strategy as part of the EU Chips Act, and we have delivered the action plan on collective bargaining and are now into implementation on that strategy.
Similarly, having published the policy statement A New Era for Irish Tourism we are now into the implementation phase of that. The committee is also considering pre-legislative scrutiny on the short-term letting and tourism legislation and we hope to progress that over the coming weeks. We launched the business events 2030 strategy and earlier this year we launched the large energy user action plan, working with our colleagues in the Department of energy to enable regions across Ireland to attract investment and that next generation of strategic industry.
As the members will be aware, we also published the Department's sectoral capital plan before Christmas, which details our investments over the next period to 2030 of €4.7 billion across all our range of responsibilities, offices and agencies. We have delivered all of those while supporting our industrial relations institutions, company law modernisation, employment rights, competitive markets and consumer legislation.
We are also committed to supporting and developing our staff who work so hard to deliver on this vital mission. Our new corporate services strategy focuses on the effective governance and oversight of all our offices, agencies and the Department but also ensuring we invest in our people and in digital transformation to ensure we have consistent and high-quality performance across the Department. Finally, an overarching priority for the Department in achieving its strategic outcomes is leading and influencing across government and it will continue to be a key focus for us and for our agencies to work with other Departments and State bodies to progress our strategic goals.
I thank the committee members for their time. I emphasise that my Department's statement of strategy is a plan to sustain full employment and quality jobs in all regions and support investment through effective and timely delivery of our strategic goals. As a Department, we are working with our Ministers with a renewed sense of purpose and ambition about what can be delivered. We are determined to sustain and translate the resilience of the economy into enduring productivity growth, higher living standards, and quality employment. Our statement of strategy builds on our long-standing strengths as an open, enterprising economy, recognising the centrality of SMEs and family businesses, leveraging our strengths as a location for leading-edge inward investment and embracing tourism as a driver of regional opportunity. As I noted, the strategy is grounded in consultation, built on evidence and designed for delivery. I and my colleagues here today look forward to working with the members of this committee as we implement the strategy. I welcome members' questions.
