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

There has been some resistance to the LEO approach, which incorporates an embedding of structures within local authorities and bringing them under the centre of excellence system within Enterprise Ireland. What is happening does represent a significant change, but I defend it very strongly as the right approach. It is vital to have access to the experience of Enterprise Ireland and its capacity to scan the horizon in terms of what is innovative in driving early-stage enterprise and small enterprise, bring in new initiatives and drive quality interventions through the LEOs. That type of service level agreement between Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs is a very valuable approach.

We have also used them to drive the youth entrepreneurship initiative and microfinance.

One of EI's roles will be to develop the innovative policy tools that LEOs can implement. That will drive quality and it will also allow the oversight group chaired by my Department and on which local authorities and EI are represented to oversee performance and have objective performance indicators for each LEO, which the Deputy has always advocated. The group can also look across the structure to identify opportunities for shared services, for example, in mentoring. A better quality and mix of mentoring will be available if a national platform and capability can be created. There could be a great deal of gain in this regard.

Equally, there could be a huge gain if the reach and strength of the local authority is part of the enterprise challenge in each county. If we can enlist the property solutions available to local authorities, their capacity to create incentives in certain areas and to use their procurement units to provide support or simply space to which enterprises can have access, we can sweat those assets. Local authorities are a powerful influencer of the enterprise environment. There will be challenges implementing this and I have heard the same criticisms as the Deputy but there are opportunities.

We have invested in training and a good training programme has been rolled out. I can provide the Deputy with the detail. With the LEOs' new role as a first-stop-shop, much of the training was around being able to understand and promote the schemes that they do not run themselves but also managing customer engagement and having a proper customer feedback. We have, therefore, invested in that. The budgets will be larger but, like everything else, we will have to compete for budgets on the quality of the investment. We put in additional money to fund youth entrepreneurship and we want to put innovative instruments down through it. There are more people in the network as a result of integrating the local business support units in the local authorities.

The INTERREG spending is on profile but, because it is co-funded, the drawdowns tend to peak at the end of the year. That is a feature of that funding as people wait until the end. We anticipate a full drawdown and, therefore, it will not be underspent.