Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. The Enterprise Ireland regional enterprise development fund, REDF, launched in May 2017, is a €60 million competitive fund aimed at supporting significant regional initiatives that will build on sectoral strengths and improve enterprise capability across the regions. The REDF is intended to support the ambition, goals and implementation of the regional action plans for jobs.

REDF funding is being made available over the period 2017 to 2020 under two competitive calls. The first call under the REDF concluded in August last year and in December I announced an allocation of €30.5 million in funding across 21 successful projects from all over the country. Four are in the northern and western region, 11 are in the southern region and six are in the eastern and midlands region. I intend to launch a second competitive call under the fund in March of this year for the remainder of the €60 million. With regard to the type of projects that may be eligible for support, there are four streams under the fund reflecting variations in scale and focus for project applications, as follows. Stream one is to support major regional, multi-regional or national sectoral initiatives with grants of €2 million up to €5 million per project in funding towards capital and current costs. Stream two is to support significant county, regional or multi-regional sectoral and-or enterprise initiatives with grants of €250,000 up to €2 million per project in funding towards capital and current costs. Stream three is for local and community enterprise projects, with grants of €50,000 up to €250,000 per project in funding towards capital and current costs. Stream four is to support significant industry clustering initiatives with grants of €50,000 up to €250,000 per project in funding towards current costs.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

All projects will have to demonstrate and will be evaluated against the following criteria: impacts and value for money, collaboration and participation, viability and sustainability, building regional strengths and significance for innovation and capability building.

In order to ensure a balanced regional spread, Enterprise Ireland has targeted €2 million to be allocated for the best ranked projects across the eight nomenclature of territorial units for statistics, NUTS III, regions which have attained a minimum score of 60% or higher in the evaluation process, over the two calls.

Full details are currently available in the Scheme Document on the Enterprise Ireland website at www.enterprise-ireland.com.

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