Mr. Tom Hayes:

There was a scheme. To recap briefly on the CEC scheme, there were four schemes. Some 117 centres have been constructed and built around the country. As I said earlier, they house over 1,000 companies with 6,000 people employed there. Three years ago under the business development manager model, we supported 46 of those in a competitive call with a manager. The evidence suggests that those centres that had a manager performed extremely well. In fact, I have the figures in terms of how they have increased over the past couple of years. Many of those have now run out.

Under the regional enterprise strategy announced yesterday, it is now planned to launch over the next number of months a new programme, which will be a three-pronged programme of which one element will be the business development manager, recognising that they play a key role in helping, assisting and supporting the enterprise centre.