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

The short answer to the question is "Yes". Could the LEOs do more? If we scaled them up and provided them with additional funding and additional staff? Could we be more ambitious in the job creation targets that we set for them? I think that we could. We are increasing resources for LEOs and scaling them up. We probably could do more. One of things, as I mentioned, is the alignment of work with slightly larger companies, so those with more than ten employees, into the future.

One of the issues that we run into around limitations for LEOs is that, unlike Enterprise Ireland client companies and IDA Ireland companies, most of them are not involved in exports and, therefore, it is often a company that is competing with another company down the road or another company in the domestic market. We have to be careful that when we provide aid to a company that we are not supporting them financially to the detriment of a competitor down the road. That is something we always have to bear in mind.