James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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188. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the provision of funding to a project (details supplied) in County Longford; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41547/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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In February 2015, as part of the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs: Regional Initiative, I announced details of a 5-year, €250 million strategy, aimed at accelerating jobs recovery in every part of the country. As part of this strategy up to €100 million in Enterprise Ireland funding will be made available over 5 years through a series of competitive calls. Funding will be allocated on a competitive basis, with most funds awarded to regional projects offering the best prospects for job-creation. A first tranche of €50 million will be made available in the period 2015 – 2017. Within the €50m there are 3 initiatives -

1. a €5m Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Competitive Call ( launched in May 2015), to fund initiatives impacting on and supporting micro-enterprise throughout the country.

2. a €5m Community Enterprise Initiative Scheme (launched in May 2015), to support collaborative proposals to promote entrepreneurship, create jobs, foster innovation and enhance export opportunities for small business.

3. funding under a third broader competitive regional call (2015 -2017) of up to €40 million to support significant projects or initiatives to improve or leverage identified enterprise capability in the region: Such projects will be:

- Industry-driven project/s that leverage identified regional strengths and sectoral opportunities.

- Collaborative in nature, involving key stakeholders (private-private/public-private) in a region or across more than one region. The collaboration may take the form of “clusters” and “enterprise hubs”, a further deepening of SME-Higher Education Sector engagement in regions, and/or formal structures and teams to drive collaborative projects.

- Able to demonstrate clear benefits to the enterprise base and the region/s (for example, increased design-led innovation, enterprise capability, procurement and supply chain opportunities, start-up activity, etc).

To inform the scoping of the third broad competitive regional funding call of €40m, Enterprise Ireland launched a Call for Expression of Ideas for Regional Initiativesin July 2015, to help identify potential areas of enterprise and sectoral opportunities in regions across the country. The submissions received are being used to shape appropriate interventions and schemes that are aimed at driving the objectives I outlined in February 2015 and to identify gaps where no existing funding interventions exists from local or national public bodies.

It is important to state that submitted ideas under this call does not confer any advantage on subsequent funding applications to Enterprise Ireland nor does it in any way indicate an intention by Enterprise Ireland to make a financial commitment.

All 3 initiatives listed above are work in progress. The submissions are currently being assessed and evaluated and a number of projects require clarification on areas such as policy, project costings, impact on job creation, duplication with other initiatives etc. No final decisions have been made on any allocation of funding to applicants. Therefore, I am not in a position to make a statement regarding the specific project regarding County Longford.