Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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248. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of applications made to the regional enterprise development fund; the number of approved grants made under the fund by county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11391/19]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Regional Enterprise Development Fund is a €60m competitive fund introduced by my Department and administered by Enterprise Ireland. It is aimed at supporting collaborative and innovative projects that can help to sustain and add to employment at a national, regional and county level.

The REDF was designed to support the ambition in the Programme for Government to create an additional 200,000 new jobs by 2020, of which 135,000 are to be located outside of Dublin. One of the principal criteria within the scheme is that proposed projects would strengthen the potential for job creation in their region, thereby contributing to delivering on the Government’s ambition.

The REDF is all about supporting local and regional initiatives that will build on sectoral strengths and help to create jobs across the regions.

In total, 152 applications were received under the first and second calls of REDF, comprising a total of 75 projects under call 1 and 77 projects under call 2.

Eligible projects submitted went through a rigorous 7-stage process before being awarded funding. A standard scoring template was used at all stages to ensure consistency of approach.

As this was a competitive process, not all projects were successful. However, to ensure a balanced regional spread, I committed to ensuring that each region would benefit by at least €2 million from the Fund once the required standard for projects is met under the evaluation criteria. This threshold has now been met across all regions.

In total, 42 projects have been awarded funding over two completed Calls worth a total of €60m, with projects supported in every region. The lead region and participant counties for each approved project are included in the following table.