Ms Maria Byrne:

I thank the committee for inviting us here today. As the committee appreciates, the Local Government Reform Act 2014 gave legislative effect to commitments to reform local government and provide it with a more central role in local economic, social and community development. The Act requires that each local authority establish a dedicated strategic policy committee for economic development, which is required to guide and support economic and enterprise development at county level. The Act also includes the establishment of local community development committees and local enterprise offices. The statutory function of the local community development committees includes the preparation and implementation of the community elements and the review of the economic elements of the local economic and community plans, the economic element being prepared by the local enterprise office.

The management and oversight of local development companies brings responsibility for national funding programmes to a local level, with the implementation of the social inclusion community and activation programme to support local strategies for social inclusion issues promoting access to life-long learning, employment and social enterprise.

The LCDCs will also facilitate the Leader element of the rural development programme by taking a management as well as an applicant role to support economic development projects for rural communities. Under Leader, €250 million will be available in the period to 2020 and the selection process for local action groups has commenced.

These more recent developments, in addition to the wider responsibilities of local authorities, indicate that we will have a direct impact on the achievement of elements of the national European 2020 targets, and in addressing several of the CSRs on labour market and SME policies. This should be reflected in the national reform plan. Unfortunately, however, there was no mention of these local authority roles in the NRP.

The establishment of three new regional assemblies in January was described by the Minister of State, Deputy Paudie Coffey, as an opportunity to frame new governance institutions, to counteract unbalanced development and promote regional recovery. The key function of the new regional assemblies will be to develop new regional, spatial and economic strategies to come on stream from 2016 onwards. These strategies will be underpinned to ensure that all relevant public sector bodies with responsibility for economic development and enterprise promotion follow through on implementation.

The Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, has indicated that all relevant agencies will be accountable to the regional assemblies as regards progress being made towards achieving the objectives of the new regional strategies.

In the Irish context, with increasing congestion in and around the capital, strategies to increase investment throughout the so-called two-tier cities, such as Limerick, would be more environmentally sustainable. Moreover, academic studies have demonstrated that because cities like Limerick have greater potential for growth, investments in these cities will very likely show a greater return.

I will give a small example of something we have done in Limerick. We have established another company under the auspices of the local authority called Innovate Limerick. It is made up of local authority representatives and council management, as well as public and private sector businesses and representatives from education. The key aims of Innovate Limerick are: to establish Limerick's innovation hub as Ireland's first growth accelerator; grow dynamic industry and sector partnerships; double the number of innovation partnerships and SME-FTI linkages; double the number of incubating and accelerating firms; also double the number of HPSUs; and deliver the national centre for social innovation. I thank the Chairman and will now hand over to my colleague, Councillor Enda Stenson.