Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can assure the Deputy that we will continue to have that separate line and this is confirmed in the service level agreement. My Department will be providing the funding for enterprise support and there will be no question of it being absorbed into the other works of local authorities. The key to the success of the local enterprise offices is, as the Deputy says, the forging of this new relationship between the staff who were in the county enterprise boards and who will continue to be deployed and the local authority staff who will be coming in. There will be 120 staff from the county enterprise boards and also 50 staff from the local authority side. In addition, we estimate there will be the equivalent of approximately 40 staff on the local authority side to provide access to services such as planning advice, who will not be deployed full-time to the local enterprise office. We reckon that there will be a substantially enhanced service available to local enterprises but it will be made up of enterprise budgets coming from our Department and the provision of staff for some enterprise support services from the local authority. That is the structure.

This year's budget will be better than last year. We are protecting that budget. It is our view that forging a relationship between the business service units of the local authorities and the enterprise delivery functions in the existing county enterprise boards will result in a one-stop shop with a broader range of services available in a single location. A key to its success will be to achieve a genuine buy-in to the enterprise agenda by the local authorities. One of the strengths of the proposal is that local authorities have very significant networks and it is our ambition to harness that network. The Deputy may know that the City and County Managers Association last year published 2,000 initiatives by different local authorities, approximately one third of which would be specific enterprise supports. Our ambition is to encourage more of that local innovation from local authorities to support enterprise.

The Deputy raised another issue which is very much on the money, so to speak, the issue of what happens if a local authority is not delivering. The approach is not to impose an immediate penalty clause whereby the funding is slashed because that would only mean that local enterprise would suffer. I refer to the special delivery unit in the health sector which examines individual areas that are not performing to the desired and expected level. In the same way, the Enterprise Ireland centre of excellence will look at the reasons for any failure with the service level agreement. The ambition will be to build it up to the expected standard. There is the possibility for reductions or mergers whereby another local authority could take on the task if there was a complete failure on the part of the original provider but that is not envisaged because we envisage that the delivery will work. A strong technical support unit within Enterprise Ireland will be a centre for innovative thinking and will help to develop that network to a national standard. Like most performance-enhancing initiatives in the public service it is about supporting a higher standard of delivery, monitoring and setting standards, encouraging, recognising and rewarding success and supporting those who are not delivering while ensuring that they can enhance service delivery. We are not planning to take the approach of immediately slashing the budgets of a county that is not performing. Instead, we plan to work with that county in the interests of the enterprises in that area and to bring them up to the standard that we expect.