The European Commission report, entitled "Helping Firms Grow - European Competitiveness Report 2014" places Ireland in the "high and improving competitiveness" category, and also finds that Ireland has the highest labour productivity per person employed in manufacturing.

It also follows:

• Steady improvement in Ireland's ranking in the IMD competiveness rankings over recent years, up from 24^th in 2011 to 15^th in 2014. The 2014 ranking represents Ireland's highest position in this series since 2008
• Forbes Magazine placing Ireland at No. 1 in its most recent Best Countries for Business ranking

Commenting on the report, Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Minister Richard Bruton said: "Improving Ireland's competitiveness is one of the central aims of the Action Plan for Jobs. Making Ireland more competitive makes it easier for us to convince multinational companies to create jobs here, and easier for us to support our Irish companies in selling their goods and services abroad. Over the past three years we have made systematic, brick-by-brick changes across the economy to improve our competitiveness, like changes to the wage-setting mechanisms, reforms in our skills and research systems, and the pro-jobs improvements to our tax code which Michael Noonan has introduced in successive budgets. And we have seen the results with 70,000 jobs created since we launched the first Action Plan for Jobs, of which 25,000 were in Irish and multinational exporting companies.

"This report is the latest in a series which show a strong performance by Ireland in international competitiveness. This makes it easier for me, my Department and our Agencies to go into boardrooms and convince companies and Governments to buy our goods and services or locate jobs in Ireland. The challenge now is to build on this, avoid doing anything that would jeopardise the recovery, and continue creating the jobs we need."