Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent)
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193. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the ten projects selected for the €500,000 competitive start fund to encourage enterprise and the diaspora to set up here, when the successful applicants will start these enterprises and in what location; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43564/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Targeting start-ups and early stage companies that have the capability to succeed in global markets, the objective of this call was to attract international entrepreneurs and members of the Irish diaspora to start, scale and succeed from Ireland, ultimately creating jobs in Ireland. A call for applications to the Competitive Start Fund from International Entrepreneurs was launched on 26 August 2015. 87 applications were received by the closing date of 9 September 2015. The applications came from both Irish nationals living abroad and non-nationals from a wide variety of countries including Albania, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, India, Italy, Macedonia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Following the call the twenty highest scoring projects were invited to pitch to a panel of external industry experts and EI representatives.

Ten projects were selected and each has been offered €50k investment in return for a 10% equity stake. Enterprise Ireland will be finalising investment agreements in the coming months, including the location of any investment.

A list of the successful projects will be available on the Enterprise Ireland website at the appropriate time and this will also identify the location of the companies concerned. To disclose the names of the companies in advance of this would be breaching commercial confidentiality. At this point, I understand that not all of the project promoters have identified where within the State they are planning to locate their companies.