Mr. Declan Hughes:

I thank the Senator for her questions. At the heart of the regional enterprise plan for 2020 is just transition and responding to challenges and opportunities relating to climate change. It is also at the heart of our national enterprise policy and is one of the key pillars of our future jobs strategy for the next five to ten years in repositioning the economy. We are approaching full employment but we are very conscious that, in the context of those jobs, we need businesses to be resilient and workers that are resilient. We have to respond to the opportunities that are there in the context of moving from brown to green and encouraging sustainable development.

Our enterprise agencies are very focused on the opportunities around new sectors and new areas of activity be they in engineering or food production. We have a specific target to reduce carbon emissions in the food sector by 10% to 15% over the period to 2030 and we will work on that. A key part of this will be working to ensure that we sustain jobs in the regions and that we upskill the workers in the regions and therefore we have the regional enterprise development fund. This €60 million regional fund supports bottom-up projects and collaborative projects across the regions, with a minimum allocation of €2 million for each region. As already stated, this has been successful as part of Project Ireland 2040. It is a new initiative but it sits alongside the Project Ireland 2040 rural funds and the urban development funds. The climate action fund is also part of that. There is a joined-up approach with the regional enterprise plans in networking with the transition team in the midlands and ensuring we can achieve balanced regional development, as referred to by the Senator. It is also about ensuring that every region achieves its potential. This means we must have significant investment into the regions, property programmes for IDA Ireland with additional site visits, and work with the institutes of technology and the universities in the regions to ensure there are attractive places to live and work as well as having property solutions.

In addition to regional enterprise funds, we have had a call from the LEOs for capacity-building at local level. This is additional funding. Of the €2.5 million that was competitively offered across the LEOs in the autumn, the midlands won €750,000, which is nearly 30%. One project in particular, Going Green, was awarded €220,000 to educate, advise and support small businesses in the midlands region in their adoption of environmentally positive actions and helping their move to improving their green credentials. There was also a project on ingenuity engineering. A third project awarded funding in the initiative was specifically around increasing the number of first-time exporters from the region. Key to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of businesses is that they diversify their markets and look at new opportunities, and internationally especially. That project was awarded €150,000. As in other regions, it will bring on new exporters.

Project Ireland 2040, together with the regional enterprise plans are very aligned in their funding and capacity building capability. Through the regional enterprise plans at local level the agencies such as IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs are working with the local authorities. Those initiatives are led by industry champions. It is very much attuned to the business view on what the opportunities are and realising those.

On data centres, we did work with the Department of the Taoiseach and in July 2018 there was a Government statement on the role of data centres in Ireland's enterprise strategy.

This set out clearly the focus on looking for locations outside of Dublin and on aligning those with locations that have energy and connectivity infrastructure, specifically, as the Deputy mentioned, high-speed data lines and telecommunications capacity. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland are continuously engaging with investors to see where there may be opportunities. I do not have the detail on the specific site the Deputy mentioned.