John Perry (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, who is in Brussels this evening, sends his apologies to the Deputy. The challenge ahead of us all in Government, in Departments and in agencies is to do everything possible to ensure this strong flow of jobs and investments continues. This means we must concentrate on developing indigenous industry, in particular, the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, and yesterday's budget was a good start. We cannot forget that 129 Enterprise Ireland client companies employ a total of 4,547 people in Tipperary.

Deputy Hayes has raised this issue on numerous occasions and the Minister, Deputy Bruton, assured me he would speak to the Deputy directly on this. Earlier this week the Minister and I announced that Enterprise Ireland had established a new micro-enterprise and small business division to spearhead the delivery of an enhanced national enterprise support model to entrepreneurs and small businesses in 2013. This is a key part of the Government's plans to restructure the support infrastructure for small businesses and represents delivery of a key action under the Action Plan for Jobs 2012.

The micro-enterprise and small business division will develop a world-class centre of excellence providing best-in-class support to entrepreneurs and small business in the execution of a national micro-enterprise policy. The new business support model will also see the establishment next year of local enterprise offices, LEOs, in Tipperary in the local authority network, and these new offices will deliver services and support to the micro and small business sectors on behalf of Enterprise Ireland.

The Enterprise Start programme is a one-day information workshop which forms part of Enterprise Ireland's entrepreneurship development activity. Two regional workshops for the mid-west, which includes north Tipperary, were held on 21 March and 10 November 2012 in Shannon which 20 potential entrepreneurs attended. An Enterprise Start programme will be held by El in Clonmel on 12 December.

We must also strengthen links between multinational companies and the rest of the economy in order that the full benefit of these major investments can feed through to the domestic economy, for example, through supply chain opportunities and mentoring for SMEs. In this regard, in accordance with the Action Plan for Jobs, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland have formed a senior management team to maximise the impact of their resources, staff numbers and budget, to deliver on their respective targets in terms of job creation, investments and economic spend in the economy. If Deputy Hayes wants to arrange a meeting directly with IDA Ireland, that can be facilitated as well.

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