Ms Orla Martin:

I thank Deputy Rabbitte for her kind comments about the Facebook page and the website. The heads of the local enterprise offices meet about six or eight times a year. Other teams within the local enterprise offices meet a number of times a year also. It is all about information sharing, the sharing of best practice, looking to see what works in some regions and what might be replicated. We also meet on a regional basis to drive actions through the regional enterprise plans and so on. That is happening.

With regard to the libraries, we find that people use the Work Matters library programmes where libraries have put in a lot of supports for people who are setting up their own businesses. They aid in patent searches and searches on Vision-Net. We link in with these businesses at what we term "pre start-up". We have also run schemes where students are working on student enterprise projects. The LEO has offered opportunities for the students to meet with some of the design experts in some of the co-working spaces who have given some of their time pro bonoto help the students on projects. We have facilitated student groups working for European youth entrepreneurship competitions, one such being through The Junction Business Innovation Centre. This sort of initiative is being replicated with other LEOs throughout the State.