Income Inequality Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19 ============================================================ Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath The programme for Government sets out a strong enterprise and fiscal framework that prioritises economic and employment growth. Last year, the Irish labour market saw sustained employment growth and rising participation with a record number of persons at work at 2.8 million people so our policies are working and our economy is resilient. The latest data to hand shows that our labour market was better than many had expected in the latter part of 2025 with the monthly unemployment rate revised down to 4.7% in December. Other data, such as CSO information on employee payrolls, also shows positive momentum at the end of 2025 with employee numbers up 2%. However, I do expect that activity levels will moderate through this year in part due to international conditions but also given that the labour market is close to full employment. My Department is continually monitoring labour market conditions and several of our recent initiatives will be central to supporting the broader economy not least our ambitious investment plans and the action plan on competitiveness and productivity I published last year. The Government remains fully committed to improving our competitive position and adding more jobs in the future and the action plan has a range of measures to build a more resilient economy. Another important initiative on the labour market front will be the successor strategy to Pathways to Work 2021-2025, which is overseen by the Department of Social Protection. That Department has recently concluded a public consultation on this as the Government looks to develop a new successor strategy. In respect of the high paid jobs being centred on major urban areas, it is important to stress this Government’s commitment to balanced regional development. Over the past number of years, we have seen strong regional development with intensive employment growth post-pandemic. Since the pandemic, numbers at work have increased by close to one fifth - 440,000 persons. In fact, budget 2026 highlighted in particular the spread of employment growth with job gains in every region in marked contrast to previous employment expansions. For example, between 2013 and 2019, growth was disproportionately driven by Dublin. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-19