The Capital funding provided to my Department is mainly focussed on grants to support our multi-annual enterprise development and innovation programmes, rather than specific projects.
The Priority Investments under the National Strategic Objective in the National Development Plan (NDP) of a “Strong Economy supported by Enterprise, Innovation and Skills”, for which my Department has primary responsibility, in the main build upon the Department’s multi annual capital programmes. The specific Business, Enterprise and Innovation Investments identified in the NDP include;
- Expansion of Advanced Manufacturing Supports, linking centres and capacity across all regions
- New Regional Sectoral Clusters to scale and internationalise enterprise in all regions
- New regional ‘Technology and Innovation Poles’, led through the Institutes of Technologies
- Brexit Business Transformation through firm level supports
- Expanding Enterprise Ireland budget for research and development
- Expanding IDA Regional Property Programme, to attract investment to regions
- A National Design Centre
- Seed and Venture Capital Funding to support regional start-ups and growth
- eHubs for entrepreneurship and start-ups in every county
- New cycles of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, benefitting Higher Education in all regions
- Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund
- Strengthened SFI Research Centres and EI Technology Centres in higher education in all regions
- Participation in the EU High Performance Computing Programme
- Upgrading of the Tyndall National Institute in Cork
- New Space Technologies Programme, to the benefit of firms in the regions
- Membership of CERN
It will be seen that many of these investments are programme orientated and given the multi annual characteristics of such capital programmes, it will be appreciated that unlike specific projects they generally do not have fixed start and completion dates.
Insofar as the funding of these investments are concerned, the NDP as well as in setting out indicative capital allocations for each of the National Strategic Objectives in the Plan also set indicative Ministerial Vote capital allocations for the period 2018 -2022. The capital ceilings set for my Department under the NDP for that period are:
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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€555 million
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€620 million
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€630 million
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€640 million
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€715 million
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The increased capital funding provided to my Department in the first two years of the NDP has enabled us to progress a number of the aforementioned Priority Investments including,
- the roll out the first phase of the Disruptive Technologies Fund
- the continued roll out of the IDA programme of providing property solutions, strategic sites and grants to deliver FDI across the regions of the country
- the establishment of the Future Growth Loan Scheme to assist business to access the finance necessary to enable them to strategically transform/adapt to the impact of Brexit
- the funding by Enterprise Ireland of a number of regionally focussed initiatives with Institutes of Technology through a programme of Regional Innovation and Technology Clusters to support regions across the country to build enterprise capability
- the launch by EI of a new €175million Seed and Venture Programme which will focus on fostering a strong pipeline of high growth innovative businesses by increasing the availability of risk capital for start-up/early stage enterprises
- the expansion and deepening of Ireland’s membership of and collaborations with international research organisations such as the European Southern Observatory and the European Space Agency
- the establishment of new programmes for Postgraduate Research at Masters and PhD levels
- the refresh of SFI’s Research Centres Programme thereby strengthening collaboration with enterprises across all regions of the country
- to commence the phased upgrade of the Tyndall Institute to enable it to continue to stay at the forefront of new technologies
I am confident that the capital funding allocated to my Department for the remaining years of the first phase of the NDP will ensure that we can continue to progress the delivery of the specific Business, Enterprise and Innovation Investments set out in the Plan.
