Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The disruptive technologies innovation fund that was launched as part of Project Ireland 2040 is, essentially, a competitive fund like the urban fund, the rural fund, and the climate action fund. Businesses and higher education institutes get together and bid for funding for a particular project they may have. It is the Government taking a punt and supporting a project that might turn out to be the next big thing or the next new invention, but is something that we really want to do. It is a €500 million fund spread over ten years. There have been 43 projects approved so far under call 1 and call 2. Some €140 million has been awarded. The extra €10 million is just a small bit extra for next year. Call 3 was launched on 24 September, with a deadline for applications on 17 December. We expect to be able to issue the next round of funding from that in March 2021. Hopefully it will spur some interesting new inventions and services that turn out to be big successes.

On the training online voucher, I believe it has just been transferred over from the Minister, Deputy Ryan's Department to ours. It had previously operated from the Department with responsibility for communications rather than from the Department with responsibility for enterprise. Feedback has been positive. It is simple to apply for and a grant of €2,500 is available, but two grants up to €5,000 are also available. It has helped many businesses to go online that were not online before. Consider takeaway businesses, for example. We have all had that experience of ordering our takeaway on our phones through an app, which we may not have done so much in the past. We are shopping more online now. Now people must book appointments in advance with their barber, when previously one could just walk in. A lot of that has worked very well but we probably need to do a little bit more of this.

An example was given of the man who works from a van and sells doughnuts. Those kinds of very small businesses can sometimes fall between stools. There are some grants available. If he had been on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, there is an advance one can get to come off the PUP. If he was not on that payment there is a small fund called the micro-enterprise assistance fund, MEAF. It might be possible, especially if he has an employee of some sort, for him to get a grant of up to €1,000 for vouched expenses to get back on the road or back into operation. I will be doing some publicity on that grant soon because there has been very little uptake of that. People do not know that it exists. It was set up for those very small businesses that did not qualify for the restart grant because they did not have a premises, and we wanted to do something for them. I believe that only 10% or 14% of that fund has been drawn down so far. We know it is small money, a couple of hundred euro to €1,000 vouched, but for somebody running a micro business that could make a big difference in getting going again.

The enterprise centres are operated through Enterprise Ireland. That fund will also be announced in the next couple of days. Some 80 enterprise centres around the country will receive funding of between €10,000 and €150,000, which is largely designed to modernise the enterprise centres from a health and safety point of view so they are Covid ready or Covid proofed. We should be in a position to make that announcement in the next couple of days. There are 85 centres spread across the country so I would imagine all parts of the country will benefit from that.

I have had a good engagement with the Open Doors initiative. Deputy Stanton and I were at that event together - I cannot remember if it was at the Guinness Storehouse or elsewhere - and it was one of those really heartwarming events where one sees people who are given opportunities they may never have had before. People who may never have thought they would go to college or never thought they would be able to hold down a job or a career are helped and mentored in that way. I have had engagement with them since I have taken over this brief and I look forward to continuing that.