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

On Monday morning in Navan I was delighted to announce just over €29 million in funding by my Department through Enterprise Ireland under the second call of the regional enterprise development fund, REDF. This funding has been awarded to 21 regional projects throughout the country, bringing the total amount of funding awarded under the two calls of this scheme to €60 million across 42 projects in all regions. The REDF was designed to support the ambition in the Programme for a Partnership Government to create an additional 200,000 new jobs by 2020, of which 135,000 are to be located outside of Dublin. One of the principal criteria within the scheme is that proposed projects would strengthen the potential for job creation in their region, thereby contributing to delivering on the Government’s ambition.

The REDF is aimed at accelerating economic recovery in all regions of the country by delivering on the potential of local and regional enterprise strengths. The fund is supporting significant collaborative and innovative regional initiatives to build on specific industry sectoral strengths and improve enterprise capability, thereby driving job creation. This will be achieved by co-financing the development and implementation of collaborative and innovative projects that can sustain and add to employment at a national, regional and county level. The fund will help to ensure the benefits of our growing economy are felt in all regions. Projects submitted by the 28 June deadline went through a rigorous seven-stage process before being awarded funding.

This was a competitive process and so not all projects were successful. To ensure a balanced regional spread, however, I committed to ensuring that each region would benefit by at least €2 million from the fund once the required standard for projects was met under the evaluation criteria. This threshold has now been met across all regions. As of Monday, all projects have been informed of their result in the competition. Further funding calls will be considered as part of a wider review of the REDF in the new year.

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