Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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10. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of LEO business expansion grants given to businesses in County Meath in 2016; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42683/17]

Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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11. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the amount of funding under the LEO business expansion grant allocated to businesses in County Meath in 2016; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42684/17]

Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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12. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the average grant amount given to businesses in County Meath under the LEO business expansion grant in 2016; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42685/17]

Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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13. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number and value of LEO grants allocated to businesses in County Meath in 2016; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42686/17]

Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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14. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the grant amounts and number of grants allocated by the Meath LEO in 2016 to businesses by sector; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42687/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 14, inclusive, together.

In 2016, the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Meath approved 25 grants – feasibility, priming and business expansion – in total for the year, to a value of €293,998. The allocation included three business expansion grants totalling €47,500 for its clients. This equates to an average grant amount of €15,833.

Details of business sectors covered by these grants are set out in Table 1.

Table 1: LEO Meath Grant Allocations by Business Sector 2016

As the first-stop-shop for the provision of supports to the micro-enterprise and small business sector in the county, in 2016 the LEO Meath ran training courses for 427 participants, provided mentoring services for 229 participants and supported 22 applications for loan finance to MicroFinance Ireland.

The LEO Meath also approved four grants totalling €8,815 to its clients under the Trading Online Voucher Scheme (TOVS), which is administered by the LEOs on behalf of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

Finally, under the Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition, the €50,000 investment fund available to LEO Meath was awarded to the winners and runners-up in the three categories: best new business idea, best new start-up and best established business. In 2016, a total of 69 young entrepreneurs applied for the IBYE competition in LEO Meath, bringing the total number of applicants in the county since the competition commenced in 2014 to 134.