Mr. Ian Brannigan:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the invitation. As needs must, the opening statement has already been circulated to the members, so I will try to keep it brief to allow time for questions.

The Western Development Commission is an organisation that delivers a unique and effective response to the development challenges of a predominantly rural region in the west of Ireland. We do this through implementation, insight, identity and investment. We initiate programmes with partners that deliver real value on the ground in a largely rural region. Examples of this include our work in the creative economy, renewable energy and things such as the regional tourism marketing, which allowed international visitors access our rural region. That programme garnered €3 million for an upfront investment of €1 million by the State. We do this through our insight and development of a robust information base on regional issues which provides an acknowledged valuable input to national policy making in areas such as energy, infrastructure and broadband. A past example where this really helped was the expansion of the availability of town gas to a wider network within our region.

Critically, although we are talking predominantly here about stream 1 and employment, we also talk about our identity as a region. In the WDC we have helped to do this through enabling and promotion of a globally recognised rural region through programmes such as Look West and others which currently have over 20,000 social media friends and have reached out to over 1 million people, addressing the needs, opportunities and strengths of our region to a global audience.

The last way in which we do it is through investment. We operate the western investment fund, a unique source of risk capital for entrepreneurs in the western region. I am very proud to say we have been doing this for over a decade and it is, in effect an evergreen self-sustaining fund, which shows how public sector investment can reap rewards in terms of self-sustainment in the circular economy.

The impact of this has been quite significant. Since 2010 the WDC has sourced and directed over €13 million in total funding towards regional enterprise and employment development. Our regional policy and analysis capability has brought large-scale change in critical areas of our rural region. As mentioned previously, our Creative West report has garnered support in the development of hundreds if not thousands of creative businesses in our region. We look forward to that eventually resulting in significant job growth, all of which will be indigenous and we hope immutable in terms of their link to the land.

We look also at how we have delivered on a regional capability for the region and ourselves to access critical EU funding programmes through the region. This is not just done through INTERREG funds but it is also looking at facilities that have enabled biomass district heating planning and technical assistance funding for local authorities in the region of 200,000, which again is the seed for hopefully moving on to public private partnerships which will allow hundreds of jobs which will be there for quite some time given the nature of the fuel supply for biomass. In total we are talking about €11 million worth of European programmes in our region. Not all of that comes directly into our region but it forms the basis of risk capital for a lot of enterprise development at a very local level.

We previously talked about our investment capability. We referred to this as a regional access to finance capability and I believe some of the members and attendees have already discussed this. We have run the VC funding in response to market failure that was identified over a decade in our rural region in the west of Ireland. At that time only 3% of the national deals were done in this critical access-to-finance avenue. We are proud to say that after a decade of addressing this through the WIF, it now represents between 7% and 10% of the VC deals. This is quite a transformative change brought by the WDC to the region. This means that we have over €48 million invested in 135 businesses, predominantly SMEs and over 2,500 jobs created directly from a programme which is now effectively an evergreen facility and capability for the region.

I return to the regional identity, which is well served by allowing employment and enterprise to grow and also through our Look West programme giving a voice and a brand that helps the region feel good about itself and communicate its needs, opportunities and strengths to the rest of the world.

Although the nature of today's discussion is predominantly to inform the members, we believe the following recommendations merit consideration. I point members towards what the OECD and international community really believes rural and regional development to be. The OECD states that regional development should include: "a development strategy that covers a wide range of direct and indirect factors that affect the performance of local firms; a focus on regional specific assets, and less on top-down investments and transfers; [and] an emphasis on opportunity rather than on disadvantage or need for support".

In short, the OECD recommends that we should always focus on the competitiveness of our rural regions. We believe wholly in this. If we focus on that under this stream of employment, it will serve our needs best. We have some thoughts on what that means, which I will summarise. There is a clear need for infrastructural investment as all parties heretofore have agreed. There is an overwhelming need for an appropriately sized and resourced regional development capability. At the moment the modus operandiis one of dispersed intervention in terms of national bodies taking a slice of regional intervention.

If one looks at the OECD and proof of concept that we and indeed some of the other parties here today have provided, nothing develops a region or a rural area better than the people within that region or rural area. This is not just because of their ties and their passion, but also because of their market intelligence and drive, which the State needs to bear in mind. That will enhance and improve not just the regional competitiveness and total net worth and gain, but also the State's coffers which is something we need to consider in the modern economy.

We believe there is room for upskilling, specifically of a tailored means. Given some of the things in our opening statement, undoubtedly in the rural regions we believe alignment of measures for the self-employed and the creation of an entrepreneurial culture is critical. We are seeing an overwhelming drive of people towards self-help in terms of self-employment. We believe that has to be accommodated in any future steps we take to make this change.