Vol. 440 No. 3
115 Mr. Finucane asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the total funding made available to the county enterprise boards; the way in which this will be distributed between the county enterprise boards for 1994; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Following upon the commencement of operations by county enterprise boards, project applications of the order of £4 million have been approved by the boards.
As the Deputy will be aware, the abridged version of the Estimates for Public Services 1994 contains a provisional allocation of £9 million for the local enterprise development fund. I should point out that this initial allocation is based on a calculation of the rate at which commitments made in respect of current applications will require the release of cash payments within the next twelve months. Therefore, it is not directly related to the aggregate level of commitments taken on by the boards in the same period. The experience of other local economic initiatives confirms that the rate at which commitments convert into matured liabilities can be fairly slow during the early, start-up phase.
In the interests of clarifying the position as regards the approval capacity available to each board in the current year, I have set a figure of £500,000 as a ceiling on new commitments to be considered by each board over the next twelve months. In the meantime, I will be prepared to consider fixing a higher limit for particular boards should circumstances so warrant.
