Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy John Halligan, for coming to the House. I raise as a Commencement matter the funding schemes for community-run enterprise centres. I was in contact recently with a councillor about a community enterprise centre in his locality which received a grant from Enterprise Ireland to provide for the employment of a business manager on a full-time basis for two years. During those two years, the centre saw significant improvements in the refurbishment of its building and in the number of upskilling classes and training courses available there. However, since the funding provision ceased, the centre can only afford to hire a business manager on a part-time basis on a modest wage of €8,000 per year. The individual who is responsible for managing the business centre is a community-spirited woman who has an interest in keeping up this job even though most people would be unwilling to do it for that sum.

Community enterprise centres are important to the development of rural Ireland. The national association for community-owned enterprise centres consists of a network of 95 active community enterprise centres across the Republic. These centres are hubs of entrepreneurial activity and constantly encourage local enterprise development and engagement with the wider local community to create jobs and economic activity. A number of centres have been established in areas which suffer from low employment and many provide upskilling and training courses. There have been schemes in the past to facilitate centres, including the community enterprise initiative fund in 2015 and the community enterprise centre business development manager scheme of 2012. These schemes facilitated the development of centres significantly. Further, the Action Plan for Jobs for 2017 includes plans to invest up to €60 million between 2017 and 2020 to support enterprise and job creation nationally. While enterprise centres will be eligible to apply for this competitive funding through Enterprise Ireland, not all will be selected for such initiatives and, moreover, the schemes are time limited. As a result, when a scheme ends, centres may very well be placed back in a situation of uncertainty as in the case I have described.

I ask the Minister of State to consider allocating long-term funding to community-owned enterprise centres to allow them to hire full-time business managers to improve their efficiency in developing rural Ireland and to allow managers to continue their good work, in particular in rural areas.