Income Inequality
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
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Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath

The data I am quoting relates to quarter 3 of 2025, so this is the up-to-date data regarding new high-quality jobs going to the west. The figure is 2,700. There are 3,900 new jobs in the midlands while the figure in the south west grew by about 4.7%, so all sectors are growing, all component parts that make up our economy are growing and our wages are growing. Critically, the key point in the CSO annual return in December was that this is the first time that we have seen real wage growth in our economy and that the growth in wages outpaced the rate of inflation, which means people have more purchasing power. The data is very clear for everyone to see. We want to continue on the basis of budget 2026 to bring more high-quality jobs to rural areas. Our IDA strategy is very focused on that with 55% going to the regions. This will be key to delivering that over the next five years and we are very much committed to doing that.

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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