Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I certainly will come back to the Deputy as regards this initiative. It is worth pointing out that the county and city enterprise boards were already co-funded by the ERDF and to a certain extent have been doing some of this type of activity. Some 40% of grants from county enterprise boards, I believe, were on a refundable basis. This is an increasing phenomenon and it helps them in terms of reallocating resources going forward.

Enterprise Ireland, likewise, in its venture capital programmes, is now taking equity in almost all cases as opposed to just giving straight grants to companies. I like the idea contained here. It dovetails with some of the recommendations in the small business forum or relates to them. As soon as these come closer to realisation, I will be anxious to see how we can make inputs to this to see how we may facilitate the application of the JEREMIE initiative to our domestic situation. I do not have the breakdown in terms of the regions yet, but I shall come back to the Deputy on that.

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