Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan.

Last night I spoke about Enterprise Ireland and its team based in London. It provides support to clients to identify key business opportunities in the short to medium term, with advice on responding to the implications of Brexit such as improving competitiveness and reducing supply chain costs.

Enterprise Ireland plans to intensify its international trade and investments schedule for the remainder of 2016 to include trade missions and events to Northern Europe, the USA, China, India and other high growth markets. Last week, EI hosted an international markets week at the RDS to provide Irish exporters with access to overseas markets advisers, which I attended. The EI strategy is to immediately strengthen Ireland's ability to penetrate other key markets so that we can sustain and grow exports and reduce our dependence on the UK. This will involve investment in programmes to ensure that EI clients have the finances, innovation and scale to grow on the international markets.

The local enterprise offices, LEOs, are a key part of Government job creation and our regional enterprise development strategy. They are driving job creation and new business start-ups in every county in Ireland. During the first two years of their existence the LEOs supported the creation of 7,500 new jobs nationwide in small and micro-enterprises. This is real momentum. We want to build on that and to deliver and sustain more local jobs to communities throughout the country. The LEOs play a particularly important role in areas more heavily dependent on local sources of job creation as they would not necessarily benefit from IDA or EI clients. There has been much talk lately about the IDA not delivering for all counties. The IDA's reputation on the international stage is second to none. It is delivering many jobs for the country. For example, 640 jobs were created in County Clare last year by the IDA, which is the sixth highest number of jobs created country-wide by the IDA. I am delighted that the capital budget for LEO in my own area will increase by €4 million, or 22%, to €22.5 million in 2017. I have visited a number of LEOs and local authorities over the past few months and I intend to meet with more of them over the coming months. I want to ensure we are making the best use of additional funding.

Developing business ideas and building company capacity in start-ups is a key role of the local enterprise offices. Last year, the LEOs enabled more than 27,000 local businesspeople to avail of business of training and more than 8,000 people availed of one-to-one-business mentoring. I am currently making provision to ensure that Microfinance Ireland can continue to provide finance for small companies for another five years beyond 2016. Microfinance Ireland has been very successful. The LEOs have a key role to play in promoting this scheme and they supported over 400 applications to MFI last year.

Tomorrow is an important day for our young entrepreneurs in that it is the closing date for applications under the Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur, IBYE, initiative, in respect of which a huge number of applications have been already received. This shows that this initiative is working. We must start from the bottom up. The LEOs have an important role to play in encouraging entrepreneurship and new start-ups. Through the provision of support for small new business we will grow employment not only in the regions but in every county and this, in turn, will drive recovery not only in the regions but in every community and county. I congratulate all young people who were successful in previous IBYE initiatives. The LEOs have supported more than 2,000 young entrepreneurs in realising their business ambitions. As I said, the application process closes tomorrow but a healthy volume of applications has been already received.

This budget forms part of the Government's three-year plan for our recovery. I believe our economy is moving in the right direction such that jobs will be created and sustained in regions in the coming years.

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