Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we use the centre-of-excellence approach, which shares the data across the various LEOs and is able to compare them. There is that advice and guidance through the LEOs as well. Having visited all the LEOs, I saw the great work they are doing at first hand. While each LEO administers the national schemes and the schemes we have all agreed, they have their own version of the schemes as well and can tweak them slightly. It is important to do that. There is a lot of opportunity to learn across the LEO network and to drive innovation.

The new framework that has been launched and agreed with Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs initially allows the LEOs to service companies that have up to 50 employees. We can build on that. That is the opportunity to reach those companies about which the Deputy is concerned. We all want to see how we can reach and support more companies, how we can help create more jobs in our regions and how we can do that best. We can do that best through the structures that are there because we can use our time, efforts and resources to champion that as opposed to spending a long number of years redesigning something else that might not provide anything better. What is key to me is that we continually devise new support mechanisms and schemes and administer them through the network we have already. That is my sense of it, and the White Paper has given us a lot to think about. We believe we have made the right call, but we are open to teasing out this matter. If there are any gaps, we want to close them.^ Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions^

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