Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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43. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment further to Parliamentary Question No. 125 of 17 December 2020, if Enterprise Ireland’s draft disability inclusion strategy, supporting entrepreneurship, has been approved by the Enterprise Ireland senior management team; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53184/21]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In 2021, Enterprise Ireland established a Diversity & Inclusion Steering Group to oversee the development of the agency’s Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) vision and strategy. To date this group has completed the first stage (Insight Gathering & Scoping) and is at an advanced stage of developing a D&I Vision and Strategy/Charter to align with EI's forthcoming new corporate strategy.

A critical component of this strategy is specific to supporting entrepreneurship & self-employment for people with a disability. The continued aim is to complete the development of the strategy by year end 2021.

In addition, as part of Enterprise Ireland’s wider strategy development 2022-24, a specific ‘Balance & Inclusive Enterprise Development’ working group was established. The group presented recommended strategic options to EI’s Senior Leadership team in Q3 2021, and D&I will be a specific pillar that will be presented to EI’s Board in Q4 2021, outlining strategic options for the delivery of EI’s 2030 ambition on ‘Balanced and Inclusive Enterprise Development’, and as part of the Enterprise Ireland’s new strategy (2022-2024).

Throughout 2021, a number of virtual events (Virtual Ability Series) for EI clients and enterprises, including: Recruit for Ability; Inclusive Recruitment podcast; and DesignAbility - Innovation through Inclusion webinar. Content is hosted on eiLearn portal and is available to all enterprises nationally (e.g. ).

Enterprise Ireland is also reassessing opportunities for greater employer engagement across their range of enterprise leadership and capability programmes, including Leadership 4 Growth, Attracting and Retaining Talent and Spotlight on Skills. The latter two programmes specifically explore employers’ current and future skills needs, and help develop talent attraction strategies, including diversity. Enterprise Ireland has a close working relationship with the Regional Skills Fora, in particular in the implementation of programmes such as Spot Light on Skills programme. This review will be completed by year end 2021.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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44. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the level of funding provided in 2020 and to date in 2021 to local enterprise boards. [52009/21]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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In 2020 the Local Enterprise Offices were in receipt of approximately €77m (€76,992,462) in funding from my Department.

The initial budget of €33.5m was understandably increased to provide sufficient funding to allow the LEOs to assist businesses from all sectors to deal with the issues that COVID presented. This included the provision of €27.4m to the Business Continuity Vouchers Scheme which offered businesses with up to 50 employees, across all sectors, a voucher of up to €2,500 in third party consultancy costs to help mitigate the impact of COVID -19 and plan for their recovery.

In 2021, the core budget for the Local Enterprise Offices was set at €48m which included a provision of €6m set aside for COVID -19 measures, plus an additional €10.2m in capital carryover to meet liabilities from the Trading Online Voucher Scheme which transferred into my department in January this year.

The Local Enterprise Offices have thus far received just over €39m (€39,089,260) of this funding.