Ms Karen Hynes:

As the Deputy knows, the local enterprise offices are business units within the local authorities. They carry out the enterprise development functions on behalf of Enterprise Ireland. Enterprise Ireland would develop the guidelines and eligibility for all of the national schemes that the LEOs would run. On training management development, the LEOs have a range of supports for all businesses, not just those that are exporting. The mentorship programme is particularly popular. For many smaller companies, management is time poor, so they find the mentoring, the one-to-one learning, training and development useful. The LEOs provide that to all businesses.

They also focus on areas such as digitalisation and the green economy. They have the trading online vouchers, which again, helps all micro-firms to benefit from a consultant who will help them with their trading strategy. They also have the green for micro programme now, which helps-----