John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Noone for raising the matter. As the Minister, Deputy Mary Mitchell O’Connor, is currently travelling abroad, I am taking this debate on her behalf.

My Department has supported the establishment of community enterprise centres throughout the country through Enterprise Ireland, which manages the community enterprise centre, or CEC, scheme. Since the launch of the first CEC scheme in 1989, €64 million has been approved for the development of centres across Ireland. Supported by four CEC schemes operated in 1989, 2000, 2006 and 2008, 157 centres were approved for financial support, of which 117 have been completed. These investments have supported approximately 1,300 companies employing over 6,000 people across Ireland. In 2012, a €2 million programme was launched for CEC business development managers and 46 business development managers were funded by Enterprise Ireland.

In 2015, my Department, in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland, adopted a new approach to supporting job creation initiatives at local and regional level in support of the regional Acton Plan for Jobs through competitive funding schemes. As such, Enterprise Ireland launched the community enterprise initiatives fund, which focused on community-driven enterprise initiatives and ways in which all local players, public and private, could work together to maximise job creation. The fund was open to existing CECs and also to organisations or groups of organisations with innovative ideas to create jobs, promote entrepreneurship, boost innovation and enhance exports.In June 2016, €3 million was awarded for 32 projects to work together at regional level.

To continue to stimulate regional growth, as detailed in the Action Plan for Jobs 2017, the Government will provide for investment of up to €60 million between 2017 and 2020 to support collaborative approaches to boost enterprise and job creation throughout the country. As part of this commitment, Enterprise Ireland will announce a new competitive fund in the near term. This competitive funding is aimed at accelerating regional economic recovery by delivering on the potential of local and regional strengths. The key to this will be a focus on larger scale, regionally strategic projects, a competitive local and enterprise initiative call for proposals and the roll-out of the regional accelerator scheme 2015 to 2017, following the first call for expressions of interest in 2016. This competitive funding will provide community enterprise centres, as well as other enterprise players, with an opportunity to submit proposals for collaborative approaches to boost enterprise job creation across the regions.

Proposals and suggestions to make the scheme more comprehensive and run it more efficiently would be welcomed by the Department which is prepared to sit down with the Senator or interested parties and listen to any proposal. With the Minister and others, I would be delighted to talk to her, but the schemes are providing substantial employment, particularly for young entrepreneurs and in SMEs, with up to 1,300 companies employing 6,000 people. This is a small number in relative terms, but these are sustainable jobs and the number continues to increase.