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

I thank the Deputy. As he rightly said, my first function in my new brief as Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation was to go to the Mullingar facility at the National Science Park. It is a wonderful facility. I have used it as an example of what other regions could do in putting forward an application and providing such a facility for the manufacturing industry. It has significant capacity to support multinationals and indigenous industry in the area, and that is what this €30 million regional enterprise development fund is all about. It is about helping regions to build on their strengths to come forward with requests for projects and to get assistance in helping them to develop them. Of course Westmeath has done very well, apart from the money received for the IMR. County Longford was successful alongside counties Cavan and Leitrim in getting funding for the development of a network of digital and innovation hubs.

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