David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the councillors and thank them for their presentation. We are anxious that the LEOs will be up and running and in place soon. There have been some delays in getting to this stage, as well as a lack of consultation in the earlier stages of the process.

The fact that we still do not have the Bill that will give effect to the establishment of the LEOs is a concern, so from our perspective, we want these up and running and we want them to work, function and add value to the work of local government, which they will. We also want them to help people who depend on the enterprise boards across the State so we hope that can be moved on in the coming weeks and months.

One value local government could bring to this process is ensuring we have a consistent approach across the State. Any objective evaluation of the work of the enterprise boards has shown variances across the State. I will provide a number of examples. Mr. O'Brien is from the south east and might be interested in these figures. Carlow created 205 additional full-time equivalent jobs last year. In the same period, Kilkenny lost 96 jobs, Waterford city lost 17 jobs and Waterford county gained 20. There are problems in respect of different areas, how they work and how the uptake of Government programmes differs. The microenterprise loan fund was designed to provide loans to small enterprises. There has been very poor uptake from some local enterprise boards, some of which have not even progressed a single application. I hope the new structure would provide a level of consistency across the State in these areas.

However, there also needs to be flexibility and targeted funding in areas with high levels of unemployment. We all agree that resources should be targeted where they are needed most. There are some areas with unemployment black spots and historic issues with entrepreneurship. The local authorities will obviously be very conscious of those deficits and will be able to put a better shape on how the resources are targeted. I hope that would be part of it as well.

My final point concerns best practice. One of the criticisms of the new structure is the argument that local authorities come from a different culture to business and enterprise and that there should be a clear separation of the two. I do not buy into this argument. If one looks at Belfast City Council, one can see how it has been the lead authority in driving enterprise development in the city and has been a good model that has been accepted by people outside the North. It has been a good body in terms of drawing down European funding and enterprise development in general. I could give numerous examples. I think we can put that argument to bed. Local government has enterprise units that are anxious to be able to expand their potential. I am excited about the potential of this and believe it needs to be rolled out but the crucial factor is getting it to the stage where the LEOs are set up and we can then start to see how they work. If there are problems down the road, we can tweak and fix them. I am supportive of the establishment of the LEOs. The caveats are that they must be targeted in terms of funding and consistency in service provision must be achieved.