Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The core function of the county enterprise boards is to develop indigenous enterprise potential and stimulate economic activity at local level. In carrying out that function, the CEBs have performed extremely well over the last 13 years, making a significant contribution to direct job creation and the development of an enterprise culture throughout Ireland. Over that period, the boards have supported some 17,000 projects, which resulted in more than 30,000 new jobs being created. In addition, some 80,000 people have benefited from the management training provided by the boards. l acknowledge the vital role that the voluntary board members have made to ensuring that the work of the boards is effective and relevant to local conditions.

However, it is important that we regularly review and evaluate the types of support and assistance that the CEBs offer to ensure that they remain properly and appropriately targeted in the context of the changing environment in which the boards operate. The budget for the network of CEBs is now €30 million per annum, and there is a clear obligation on us to ensure that the money is used in an effective and efficient manner.

Against that background, a comprehensive review of the role of the CEBs was carried out by Fitzpatrick Associates in 2003, the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the boards. While endorsing the continued role of the CEBs in the delivery of State support to the micro-enterprise sector, the Fitzpatrick report made several recommendations designed to improve the overall effectiveness of the network.

The recent Small Business Forum report also endorsed what it saw as the key recommendations of the Fitzpatrick report: that CEBs should renew their focus on their core enterprise and entrepreneurship responsibilities, minimising the wider local economic development activities with which they had increasingly become engaged; that CEBs should gradually shift the emphasis of their activities away from the provision of grant aid support towards repayable supports, the provision of business information, advice, training and capability enhancement; that a central CEB co-ordination unit should be established in Enterprise Ireland to provide leadership, direction, technical support and shared services for the network of CEBs; and that the national micro-enterprise co-ordinating committee should operate fully and meet regularly.

The CEBs themselves were involved in the 2003 Fitzpatrick review, through both extensive consultations with, and submissions to, the consultants carrying it out, as well as through their representation on the steering committee that oversaw production of the final report. The subsequent recommendation that the CEBs be integrated into the mainstream enterprise development system by establishing a CEB central co-ordination unit in Enterprise Ireland was welcomed by the CEBs in their response document, Driving Entrepreneurship and Small Business in Ireland.

The proposed new central co-ordination unit in Enterprise Ireland was subsequently supported by the enterprise strategy group and approved by the Government in 2005. The role of the new unit will be to provide a range of strategic, administrative, financial and technical supports to the CEBs with the ultimate objective of enhancing the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of the CEBs and the development of micro-enterprise in Ireland and contributing to a greater level of consistency and best practice across the CEB network as a whole. The Department has been working with Enterprise Ireland and the CEBs regarding arrangements for the establishment of the new unit, and it is hoped that it will be operational within a few months.

The Department is firmly committed to active dialogue with the CEBs. Officials from the Department meet representatives of the CEB network very regularly. Those frequent meetings are used as a vehicle to explore the most appropriate and balanced way to respond to the evolving business and economic environment, including the implementation of the recommendations of the Fitzpatrick and other reports.

In the context of the dramatically more favourable business and economic environment, CEBs have been evolving their policy focus and client support interventions gradually over the years to reflect changing needs. Increasingly, the CEB focus is now on enterprise promotion, generation and growth rather than simply on job creation, as was largely the case in earlier years. The cultivation of entrepreneurially active local communities around the country is now central to the overall CEB mission, with activities directed at expanding business management capability, encouraging increasing levels of female participation in business, and providing education for enterprise through college curriculum design and student enterprise schemes. We do not seek to place constraints on CEBs.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is engaged in dialogue with the CEBs to determine how best we can continue to adapt to this changing economy. Both the Department and the CEBs want to build on that success. The Ireland of 2006 is thankfully in economic terms not the same Ireland of 1993. It is vital we offer supports to indigenous micro-enterprise which are appropriate, targeted and ultimately effective.

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