Vol. 442 No. 2
66 Mr. O'Malley asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the role of the county enterprise partnership boards in tourism promotion in each county as stated in the Programme for a Partnership Government, 1993 to 1997; the functions of the boards at present; and the future functions of the boards.
In the period after I took up office last year, I arranged for a review to be undertaken of the decision of the then Government in October 1992 to establish county enterprise boards. Arising from that review, I secured the approval of the Government to a refocusing of the objectives and operational structure of these boards so as to ensure that they would have a specific enterprise development mandate. There are now 35 boards in existence operating on a nationwide basis.
As a consequence of the review exercise undertaken at my request, I decided that county enterprise boards should not assume responsibility for certain other local initiatives to which reference had been made in the Programme for a Partnership Government, 1993 to 1997. The employment, training, education and community development needs of disadvantaged areas, including the deployment of community employment schemes, are more appropriately the responsibility of area partnership companies, which operate as a parallel measure under the local development programme.
The primary objectives of each county enterprise board are to focus, develop and support local entrepreneurship and enterprise within the framework of a coherent, integrated county enterprise action plan so as to build a local economy of real strength and permanence which will give jobs and wealth sufficient to its needs.
