Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy very much. I add my congratulations to the winners. I met with SERI in July. I received a briefing from it on the survey it commissioned, in which 66 of the social enterprises across Ireland participated. SERI made it very clear that it has had very positive engagement with the Department, Enterprise Ireland and local enterprise office staff. This led to the roll-out of the workshop just last week. The workshop is aimed at educating LEO staff about the profile of social enterprises. Deputy Conway-Walsh alluded to their profile and how important it is to make sure we educate the staff who are making the decisions on the award of grants. I appreciate that there must be consistency across the 31 local enterprise offices in that regard. The reason the workshop is so important is because it is about educating staff in all local enterprise offices on the value of social enterprises. The training will improve the consistency across the decision-making channels.

To be clear, and to put on the record of the Dáil, once a social enterprise has a commercial operation, it is entitled to access the same support as any other company, both from the perspective of LEOs and Enterprise Ireland, but it must meet the same terms and conditions as any other applicant.

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