Ms Karen Hynes:

Part of the mandate of the local enterprise offices is to work with entrepreneurs in early-stage companies and to identify those with the potential or the capacity to export. A lot of their supports focus on building that capacity first, so they would give direct financial aid to companies to help them to achieve goals around competitiveness, management development and looking at their products, particularly in the context of innovation and services.

They fund companies to do this. They work very closely with Enterprise Ireland. There is good co-operation and collaboration between the local enterprise offices and Enterprise Ireland. When the local enterprise offices identify companies that have reached the stage of being ready to export they will work with Enterprise Ireland. These clients will transfer to Enterprise Ireland to access further supports and, in particular, international connections and the network of overseas offices. The local enterprise offices work the early stage of the pipeline trying to develop and identify early exporters. They will contribute to the target with an additional 2,000 exporters.