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

Companies supported by Enterprise Ireland employ 5,921 people in Tipperary, and 136 new jobs were created in Tipperary in 2018. The local enterprise office also had a very good year with 160 new jobs created in Tipperary in 2018. As I said, I recently launched the regional enterprise plan at Lisheen Mine. I was pleased to allocate funding of over €4.6 million to the Irish Bioeconomy Foundation in the old Lisheen Mine. It is a wonderful facility. When I was there I also visited the AgriChemWhey project to see what it is doing. It is building a first-of-a-kind industrial scale biorefinery. It is a flagship project that is focused on the development of an integrated biorefinery for the conversion of residues from the food processing industry to high-value sustainable foods and products. That is a €30 million project funded under Horizon 2020. In addition, Tipperary town received €600,000 under the regeneration project. There is a great deal happening there. The regional enterprise plans have a ground-up approach and there is a special focus in the plan for the mid-west on Tipperary. I realise there have been problems there and we want to address those problems to ensure that jobs are created throughout the county. As I said, Tipperary town gets a special mention.

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