Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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92. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will report on the progress or otherwise in the implementation of the Regional Enterprise Plans to 2024; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [60493/22]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Regional enterprise development and sustainable local job creation is a key policy priority of mine and this Government.

My Department launched nine new Regional Enterprise Plans to 2024 earlier this year.

The REPs are ‘bottom-up’ plans, developed by regional stakeholders and focus on undertaking collaborative initiatives that can help strengthen the regional enterprise ecosystem thereby realising enterprise growth in each of the nine regions across Ireland.

Each REP contains a number agreed Strategic Objectives and actions for delivery by the end of 2024.  

At regional level, each Plan is overseen and monitored by a Regional Steering Committee made up of regional stakeholders and chaired by a senior level private sector businessperson.

Since publication and launch, Steering Committees have been meeting and working groups are being agreed to drive implementation of actions or groups of actions.  

My Department is responsible for monitoring implementation at the national level. Along with Minister of State Calleary, I chair the REP National Oversight Group (NOG) which is made up of the Chairs of each REP as well as representatives from the Enterprise Agencies, Head of the Local Enterprise Office network the LGMA, and representatives from relevant enterprise focused offices.

The NOG met in October and implementation was considered to be progressing well.  Department officials are meeting with each region’s Chair and Programme Manger on a one-to-one basis throughout the month of December.

The Chair of the Steering Committees will submit two Progress Reports to the Department over the lifetime of the plans. The first progress report is expected for mid-year 2023 documenting implementation progress to end of Q2 2023; and a final progress report documenting implementation overall expected at end of 2024.

In addition, I can advise the Deputy that my Department has secured up to €145m in regional enterprise funding over the coming years from the European Regional Development Fund to drive implementation of the Regional Enterprise Plans.  I am keen to get this funding out to the regions as soon as possible and I have asked my officials to work with Enterprise Ireland on launching the first call of funding under the ERDF early next year.