Mr. Kevin Sherry:

In respect of where the jobs were created and the question of Dublin versus the rest of the country, of the 8,000 plus net new jobs, about 2,300 were in Dublin and the rest were throughout the country, so it is fair to say that there was a fairly significant regional spread. We will give the committee a breakdown as to where precisely those 8,200 jobs were created but it is about one third-two thirds.

The Deputy is correct regarding the local enterprise offices. There has been significant transformation in terms of the work and where they were two to three years ago.

There is now a strong performance culture within local enterprise offices which, to a large extent, stems from the former county enterprise boards. Whatever about what we think of what they are doing, a client survey which we carried out this year, to which there were 750 respondents, showed positive results in the interaction of the client base with local enterprise offices throughout the country. For example, 75% of respondents said they would recommend a local enterprise office to an acquaintance or a friend; 70% said the local enterprise office had made it easy for them to conduct business; 64% were satisfied with the staff with whom they had engaged directly, while 82% said the funding they had received from the local enterprise office had helped and enabled their business to grow and develop.

Through our centre of excellence we have in place a huge range of supports to help and enable local enterprise offices to conduct their business. For example, we have a service level agreement in place with the local authorities, although it is being reviewed. The agreement sets out the role and responsibilities of the local authorities, local enterprise offices and Enterprise Ireland, including the deliverables on each side in terms of budgets, evaluation, procedures, processes and training. On the training and development of staff of local enterprise offices, there is a three year programme in place. We are approximately half way through the programme which seeks to ensure the functional competencies of staff to enable them to deal with their client base. In this regard, staff have undergone training on how to assist clients in the areas of change management, leadership, how to utilise social media to help them to grow their businesses and how to ensure they have the necessary financial expertise to do so. There are a range of supports in place. Another is the progression pathways which seek to ensure companies move through the system in order that once they reach a certain stage they can move through the local enterprise office to Enterprise Ireland.

On the other major changes that have taken place, it is fair to say local authority managers have engaged with enterprises. The view in the past was that local authority managers were not enterprise-friendly. To be fair to the CCMA and local authority managers, they are now much more engaged in the process, but that is not to say there is still not work to be done. As there will always be movement of people, there are some resource issues within some of the offices, but we are working with the local authorities to address them. We have taken on a number of new CEOs. There is also some work to be done in the area of communications. It is an ongoing process, but it is fair to say a lot of significant progress has been made in the last while.