Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Annual Report 2014: Enterprise Ireland

1:30 pm

Mr. Tom Hayes:

One of the very early things we did was to bring all staff together for training days. In fact, Senator Quinn gave us the benefit of his experience in terms of customer service, which obviously went to the core of the business he ran. Equally, we want to ensure the same kind of philosophy runs through the local enterprise offices as well. We have had a huge investment in terms of training. We are about half-way through a three-year rolling programme which is focused right across the whole spectrum of change management, leadership and all of the functions it takes to enable the staff to deal with customers on the ground. The reality is this is a significant change and there are cultures which we are working to ensure are bedded in. As I said earlier, to be fair to the local authorities and the managers within them, I think they have really embraced the idea of enterprise coming into the ambit of the local authorities. However, as in any case where there is a significant change process, it takes some time. We will keep working at it.