Mr. Tom Hayes:

On the local enterprise offices, the Government decided to dissolve the county and city enterprise boards and replace them with local enterprise offices.

It was a trying year in terms of the transformation from CEBs to local enterprise offices. Legislation had to be introduced to dissolve the boards of the CEBs.

The SLA framework was established. A significant amount of work was involved in terms of branding because a brand had to be developed. Finances were required because they had to integrate into the local authorities, and the same was required for IT systems. There were issues in terms of logistics because people had to move, and five or six are still waiting to move because they are locked into longer-terms leases or are in community enterprise centres which are more appropriate locations.

There was a national launch and each individual LEO was launched. We placed a major emphasis on staff training and development because change management meant people were operating in a very different environment. The functional competencies of the staff were also critical in areas like social media training, marketing, financial analysis, business development, understanding new business models and business dynamics. We also had to establish protocols. We now have protocols between the LEOs and a number of other agencies because it is a first stop shop to where anyone hoping to start a business goes. There are protocols with bodies such as Revenue, the Department of Social Protection, Microfinance Ireland and, as was mentioned, the community enterprise centres which are a significant resource around the country in terms of a property solution for anybody who wants to start a business.

The service level agreement involves a three year framework and we will review it in the second quarter of this year.