Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In respect of Irish-owned business, most of the effort and 70% of the budget I have goes into supporting Irish-owned business, and we have tried to do new things. There have been major improvements in access to finance and various instruments. There has also been a major expansion of Lean, innovation and other initiatives that can help companies to up their game, such as new models to help people to recruit, and so on. We have a competitive call out for LEOs, so it is based on the quality of the proposals that come in, but we are not allocating money automatically. We committed to this and we said at the outset that part of this process would be competitive calls to encourage more collaboration and more innovation. The LEO is to become a centre of innovation for SMEs. We are following that and having a competitive call so the best projects will win. That is the right way to go. Resources are constrained, so I cannot allocate special moneys to anything, but we are using the money we have in as creative a way as we can.

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