Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 June 2016
657. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the targets for local enterprise office client investment and job creation for each of the next five years in each of the State's regions. [14352/16]
View answerThe Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) were established in April 2014 as the “First Stop Shop” support service for micro and small businesses in each Local Authority area. Their aim is to promote entrepreneurship, foster business start-ups and develop existing micro and small businesses to drive job creation and to provide accessible high quality supports for their clients’ business ideas.
Under the terms of the Service Level Agreement between Enterprise Ireland and each Local Authority, the LEOs are required to produce annual Local Enterprise Development Plans (LEDPs) setting out clearly what the LEO intends to deliver over the following 12 months. The Plans identify and prioritise the key enterprise sectors and entrepreneurial capacity challenges that need to be targeted in each LEOs’ functional area.
Based on the Annual Employment Survey, overall in 2015, LEO clients created a total of 7,122 new jobs (full- and part-time) in gross terms; taking into account losses, there was a net increase of 3,533 all jobs (full- and part-time). At the end of 2015, total direct employment among 6,573 LEO client companies stood at 32,592 (of which 23,641 were full-time and 8,951 were part-time).
In addition to direct financial assistance, the LEOs supported an even wider cohort of entrepreneurs and small businesses in 2015 through:
- 1,896 training programmes involving 27,185 participants;
- provision of one-to-one mentoring support to 8,175 participants;
- 399 referrals to Micro Finance Ireland of which 200 were approved; and
- promoting the Trading Online Voucher Scheme with almost 1,700 businesses participating.
In 2015, the LEOs provided a range of development supports aimed at building company capacity and performance among the micro-enterprise sector; in 2015 they paid out direct financial assistance to 984 business projects (against a target of 900), to the value of €10m. Of these, 400 were priming grants for start-up companies.
On the basis of the same allocation for 2016, the LEOs have again targeted the approval of a total of 900 projects to be funded and an overall total of 1,500 full time equivalent jobs associated with this direct financial support funding for the year. (The delivery of these jobs will be spread over 2016 and the coming years and will be supplemented by increased employment by companies that received LEO financial supports in previous years).
In addition, last week I announced further capital funding investment in the LEOs under the LEO Competitive Fund this year. As part of this scheme, an initial allocation of €2m is being made to support 16 collaborative job creation initiatives at local and regional level in support of the Regional Action Plans for Jobs. A further call for proposals later this year will aim to support more such initiatives to strengthen job creation in each region.
At regional level, the Regional Action Plans for Jobs (RAPs) aim to ramp up job creation by empowering the range of public and private interests, including Local Authorities, to deliver new job creation initiatives. The LEOs are a key player in many of the specific actions in the plans and the above competitive funds will enable them to deliver on their commitments under the RAPs.
|
Region |
Published Regional APJ targets by 2020 |
|
North East/North West |
28,000 |
|
Midland |
14,000 |
|
West |
25,000 |
|
Dublin |
66,000 |
|
Mid-East |
25,000 |
|
Mid-West |
23,000 |
|
South-East |
25,000 |
|
South-West |
40,000 |
|
State Total |
246,000 |
