John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The merger of county enterprise boards, CEBs, and the local enterprise offices was not a great idea, in my opinion anyway. I thought the country enterprise boards were doing just fine and now they are going into county councils where there is not a great record in terms of commercial operations. I hope Enterprise Ireland will keep a close eye on them. Can you tell me the cost of the new arrangement? Was there a cost in terminating the CEBs and then a cost of setting up these local enterprise offices? Will you have direct responsibility for them?