Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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126. To ask the Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment the estimated cost of increasing funding to InterTradeIreland by 50%. [25312/20]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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InterTradeIreland (ITI) is jointly funded by my Department and its counterpart in Northern Ireland, the Department for the Economy.

In 2020, my Department's allocation to ITI was €12.692m. That allocation is made up of €10.192m in core funding and an additional €2.5m which was allocated to ITI in April to help cross border firms navigate the challenges that have arisen as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Government has been steadily increasing the core funding to ITI in recent years to enable the body to engage with more of the companies that are seeking its support through the Brexit Advisory Service, as well as meeting demand for existing programmes which are all designed to promote and support cross-border trade.

An increase of 50% to the core funding provided to ITI by my Department would require an additional €5.096m.