Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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295. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the budget allocations to the regional enterprise development fund in each of the years 2017, 2018 and to date in 2019, by county, in tabular form; the amount drawn down in each year to date; the number of applications for the fund by stream, year and county to date; the number of successful and unsuccessful applications, respectively, by county, in each year; and the number of payments that have issued to each approved project in each year, by county. [52568/19]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Government’s €60 million Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF), administered by Enterprise Ireland, has the objective of supporting every region to build on its unique strengths and ultimately create sustainable jobs.  Administered via two competitive calls, a total of 42 projects were approved funding totaling €59.5 million.  The budget for this fund is part of Enterprise Ireland’s budget to support enterprise development. 

Successful projects under Call 1 and Call 2 of the fund were announced on the 11th of December 2017 and the 3rd of December 2018 respectively. A total of 21 projects were successful under each initiative and a total of €31.5 million was approved under Call 1 and €29 million under Call 2.  In June 2019, I launched Call 3 with funding allocated of €45 million. Assessment and evaluation of applications under Call 3 took place in October and November and the successful projects are due to be submitted to Enterprise Ireland’s Board in December. It is expected that the successful projects in Call 3 will be announced in January 2020.

Table 1provides a breakdown of the grants approved to successful projects under Call 1 and 2 by region. Table 2presents the amount drawn down each year to date under Call 1 and 2 of the REDF. It is important to note that there is a lag time between grant approved and grant paid. Grant expenditure must be incurred by the successful grant awardee and then inspected by Enterprise Ireland prior to payment.

The number of applications, successful and unsuccessful, received under each of the four funding streams, by region, is presented in Tables 3, 4 and 5. Due to the collaborative nature of projects, the regional breakdown of projects presents the best overview of applications, successful and unsuccessful. Table 3, 4 and 5 provides the detail by region.

Due to the collaborative nature of each project, the regional breakdown below presents the best overview of the number of payments issued to successful applicants to date. Funding approved to successful projects was in the form of grants and is presented in Table 6.

Table 1: Grant approved to successful projects under Call 1 and 2

Table 2: Payments under the Regional Enterprise Development Fund by year under Call 1 and 2

Table 3: Applications under Regional Enterprise Development Fund

Table 4: Approvals under Regional Enterprise Development Fund

Table 5: Unsuccessful projects under Regional Enterprise Development Fund

Table 6: Number of payments that have issued to each approved project in each year by region