The county enterprise boards operate as autonomous bodies under interim guidelines pending their incorporation as companies limited by guarantee and the coming into effect of the Operational Programme for Local Urban and Rural Development. Accordingly, it is the responsibility of each board to determine whether, and to what extent, projects in a particular sector require assistance, having regard to the established eligibility criteria and to such considerations as the possibility of the displacement of existing business in that sector.
Moreover, each board is required to prepare and implement a county enterprise plan which will take stock of existing provision and outline sectoral objectives to guide the board and its evaluation committee in deploying the limited resources available to it for direct enterprise support.
Each county enterprise board has been given the same clear project evaluation and eligibility criteria. While similar types of small enterprise projects can be expected to feature among the projects assisted by different county enterprise boards throughout the country, every project is the subject of an appraisal process in the course of which the county enterprise board considers what its local area could use or could develop to strengthen the economic activity of that county or city.
