Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 4, between lines 28 and 29, to insert the following:“6. The Minister shall, within 12 months of the enactment of this Act, bring forward a report to assess—

(a) the impact of the measures contained in this Act on the overall level of funding available to local authorities carrying out functions prescribed under this Act, and
(b) the challenges faced by local authorities in trying to achieve matching funding with that provided by Enterprise Ireland.”.

I thank the Chairman. I welcome the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton and his officials.
The relationship between Enterprise Ireland and the local authorities is crucial to how the local enterprise offices, LEOs, will work. On Second Stage I welcomed the provision of the service level agreement, which is a very detailed document and contains measurable targets. I want to ensure that local authority funding is robust and open to scrutiny so that people will be able to see that funding levels do not change and that enterprise-related funding does not get subsumed into the overall budget when the local authority comes under pressure. Let me give an example. Many local authorities will be under pressure as a result of the storm damage. I do not want a situation to arise that will allow the funding allocated to enterprise to be moved to another subhead to alleviate specific pressures.
Amendment No. 3 refers to performance targets agreed in service level agreements, SLAs. In order for the SLAs to have real effect there needs to be consequences if Enterprise Ireland or the local authorities do not meet their targets.

The Minister referred to the various schemes such as the micro-finance scheme, the credit guarantee scheme and the essential and very important work of the local enterprise offices in rolling out those schemes. However, unless there is a consequence for not meeting the targets, the service level agreement will fall and will fail. We want to introduce a business environment into how the service level agreement is administered. I refer to amendment No. 4. The level of funding from the departmental subhead to the county enterprise boards can be identified. We know how much money the boards have available to spend on local enterprise. I would like that money to be available to provide local enterprise offices with a separate funding line in the Department so that it can be seen how much the Department is spending on local enterprise.