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

I thank the committee. I would like to introduce Mr. Stephen Curran, an official in the Department who deals with this area and with international investment.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the committee. As members may know, I meet twice yearly, in the North-South Ministerial Council, with the Northern Ireland Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, who up to now was Ms Arlene Foster. Mr. Jonathan Bell is taking over that role. We jointly oversee the work of InterTradeIreland.

I know InterTradeIreland made a presentation to the committee. InterTradeIreland is a remarkable body in terms of what it is doing. I am sure it explained what it does and that its ratio of added value to expenditure is very strong. In its last three-year programme up to 2013, it set a target of a jobs impact of 500 but it reached 1,900. It has set a job impact target in its 2014 to 2016 programme of 3,500 and in the first year it hit 1,900, which is past the halfway mark. InterTradeIreland runs innovative and targeted programmes which fit well within the portfolios of the bigger bodies, both North and South. I am sure members know about Acumen, which is dealing with cross-Border business. It also has a Go-2-Tender programme, which encourages companies to combine and bid for procurement contracts. The programme Elevate seeks to support exporting. It has a very interesting technology transfer programme under which it places graduates North and South in one another's companies and has the support of access to third level colleges. It has been innovative in the operation of its programmes. Not only has it faced the general efficiency reduction in terms of budgets in the past number of years, but more recently it has faced a cut because of the difficulties in putting together the budget in Northern Ireland. We have been very keen to try to prevent this from impacting on the work that is being done. I think it will be able to maintain its programmes this year through reserves. It has gained great acceptance, North and South. The good work it does has been very fruitful in building mutual confidence among Ministers. We have very good exchanges and I hope we can build on that.

The investment under the INTERREG programme is very significant. The INTERREG programme did not just cover enterprise, for which I have responsibility, but also transport, tourism and health. It resulted in 28 projects coming forward. Some of these innovative projects involved the local enterprise office structures and similar ones in Northern Ireland. Together they have focused on initiatives to support micro-enterprises but also on the flagship projects of the science parks in Derry and Letterkenny and the enterprise centres in Omagh and Carrick-on-Shannon. Those who visit these centres can only be impressed. The new programme will shortly have its first call. I know money for research and innovation has been set aside where people see an opportunity to build connections between the private sectors, North and South, through collaborative work. That has been an important theme of much of the work. InterTradeIreland is trying to develop collaboration in the research and innovation areas and this can go deeper and will foster collaboration at the level of enterprise. I hope it will stimulate work in this area. There are two streams of funding. The smaller of the two is for SMEs to get involved in cross-Border research and innovation activity, which is very sensible, and the large block of money, €52 million, will be aimed at the creation of centres of excellence, which would undertake research in two specific areas, health and life sciences and renewable energy.

It is very sensible that we move towards that. We are a small island and we cannot be expert at everything. Where we can have centres of excellence through combining resources, then that clearly is helpful.

The committee will know, from InterTradeIreland, about the success of the Horizon 2020 collaboration we have in place. It has proven itself in that the jointly sponsored programmes have been more successful. They have enjoyed a higher success rate in drawing down funds than stand-alone projects. We also have the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership, which is in its ninth year.

Members have mentioned issues related to a possible British exit from the European Union. Clearly, such an exit would be a challenge in any consideration of the all-island economy, not least because of the contribution of European funding but also because, as two small trading economies that operate side by side, it is in both our interests to have barrier-free trade and investment. Naturally, there is concern, North and South, about an exit. We are keen to assist the process of negotiation that is emerging in order to try to get a satisfactory outcome that can be put to the British people in due course, as indicated by the new British Government.

In terms of North-South trade, there has been some significant improvement in recent times. This year to date, we have had 12% growth in Irish trade to the North, which is an increase on the previous year's rate of 8% and that of 3% in the year before that. We have seen some growth. Both economies are seeing some recovery in employment. In the North, there was 1.7% growth in employment last year and in the South, it was just over 2%. There are some signs of vibrancy in the two economies, which bodes well for the future.

The committee has considered wider development zones and so on. We are watching that debate. One of the things that we are doing, as the committee will know, is looking at weaker regions and analysing how to maximise the performance of our regions. We have committed to enhanced activity, with €150 million in the IDA property-based area. We also have committed to these calls within the regions. We are open to innovative calls coming forward from community-based groups, local enterprise offices and others which would be collaborative. We are consciously providing loadings in favour of innovative collaboration. There is a potential in these calls to see initiatives come forward that would tap into the potential of the cross-Border region.

I will leave my comments at that and will take questions or deal with issues members would like to put.