Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My questions are similar to a certain extent. We saw the figure of six additional Enterprise Ireland jobs developed last year. While great work is ongoing, indigenous businesses often tell as they have difficulty drawing down grants. In addition, sometimes after grants have been drawn down, so many steps are put in front of them they are better off not drawing down the grants and trying to complete projects themselves. It is difficult to access. It seems very odd that Enterprise Ireland, which focuses on the indigenous sector, which has crashed compared to the FDI sector, would have for the second year a transfer of its budget from it. IDA property seems to be the source of a large chunk of the redistributed funds. It would be interesting for the committee to find out exactly what these property costs were. If money is being assigned to deal with a property portfolio we could get details on these property portfolios and the elements of costs requiring these annual transfers. There is an opportunity cost to these transfers because they remove money from Enterprise Ireland and potential indigenous businesses and put it into property which at present is not an enterprise opportunity for the State.

I have much experience with INTERREG and it does excellent work with regard to the PRTLI and the Tyndall National Institute. I would be interested to see what its key performance indicators will be. When we speak about foreign direct investment, IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland we often ask the cost per job. It would be useful for us to start analysing the outputs of the PRTLI and the Tyndall National Institute with regard to whether a cost per job key performance indicator exists or what key performance indicators are used. It would help us measure comparatively the benefit of expenditure in these sectors as opposed to others.

On page 32 of a document I have there is a section on jobs, enterprise and innovation which mentions an original Estimate and Revised Estimate for 2012. The science, technology and development programme is reduced by €5.738 million. However, the totals for the original Estimate and the Revised Estimate do not show a difference of €5 million. The difference is €738,000. I do not know whether this is an anomaly or a print error but I would like to draw the attention of the Minister to it.