Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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95. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation her key priorities in relation to the forthcoming capital review; the projects submitted for priority inclusion in the review; the status of negotiations with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in relation to the review; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [2283/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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“Building on Recovery: Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2016-2021” was published in September 2015 by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on behalf of Government at that time.

This capital plan set out that an indicative amount of €3.01 billion in capital investments would be made through the Department’s Vote primarily through the enterprise agencies covering the period 2016 – 2021 inclusive.

The funding supports the jobs, enterprise development and innovation agendas and is, in the main, in the form of multi-annual capital grant supports to agency client companies and research and development investments made through Ireland’s higher education institutions.  

A large portion of the enterprise agency grant supports are multi-annual in nature and typically span a three to seven year period across many thousands of client companies and associated projects. In additional a significant portion of the funding provided is through competitive calls on an annual or bi-annual basis.  

The mid-term capital review process was completed in Spring of 2017.  My Department highlighted four main priority areas in our submission to the review;

- Delivering on the Government’s Regionalisation Agenda;

- Transformational supports for indigenous enterprise to respond to Brexit challenges;

- Immediate ramping up of R&D investment in support of Government’s science strategy “Innovation 2020”;

- “Access to Finance” contingency funding packages over 2 years needed to support firms most at threat in the face of Brexit.

The four priority areas are primarily underpinned by the capital programmes of the enterprise agencies spanning across Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, Inter-Trade Ireland and the Local Enterprise Offices. Other strategically important funding of relevance to the mid-term capital review included the Brexit Loan Scheme, the Credit Guarantee Scheme, Ireland’s membership of various international research organisations, a successor to Cycle 5 of the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, the Interreg programme, the National Standards Authority of Ireland and funding to the Tyndall National Institute. Some of these funded areas also involve significant private industry investment to grant awards as well as the utilisation of enterprise agency own resource income as part of enterprise development.

The mid-term capital review is now feeding in to the Government’s proposed "National Development Plan" (NDP) which is to cover the period 2018 to 2027.  The NDP is an ongoing process being co-ordinated by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The NDP will underpin the strategic outcomes which are to be set out in the forthcoming “National Planning Framework - Ireland 2040" (NPF), which is being overseen by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.

Over recent months my Department has been actively engaged in discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in relation to the NDP to highlight the centrality of enterprise and innovation supports to Ireland’s future economic development and to ensure sustainable employment growth.

My Department has emphasised the need to ensure sufficient multi-annual capital allocations are in place to support future economic development and job creation, particularly in a regional context and in light of the significant challenges posed by BREXIT and the evolving global foreign direct investment landscape.

Discussions are ongoing and it is anticipated that the NPF and NDP will be completed in the weeks ahead during the first quarter of 2018.