The achievement of balanced regional growth is a core objective of Government. Promoting entrepreneurship, attracting inward investment and facilitating the key infrastructural needs of Irish enterprise across all regions is vital to ensuring a vigorous pipeline of new business leaders, new business ideas and entrepreneurial activity. The Action Plan for jobs is a whole of Government, national strategy aimed at creating and sustaining jobs across all regions of the State.
The objective of balanced regional development is supported by the EU Commission's Regional Aid Guidelines, which recognise that some regions can face significant structural disadvantage. The Guidelines permit member states to grant higher investment aid to these areas. Under Ireland's current Regional Aid Map, the highest rates are afforded to the Border, Midlands and West (BMW) region.
Under the Action Plan for jobs, the establishment of a one-stop-shop to provide micro enterprise support through the dissolution of the existing CEB offices and the creation of a new network of Local Enterprise offices (LEOs) will ensure an enhanced delivery of support to micro enterprises in the regions in question and nationally.
Specifically in relation to the regions in question, Enterprise Ireland's network of offices includes Sligo, Letterkenny and Dundalk. This regional spread allows the agency to drive take-up of its services and supports such as entrepreneurship programmes focused on identifying new business opportunities, at a local level, thereby maximising take up and impact.
It is worth noting that over the last four years, Enterprise Ireland supported 64 High Potential Start Ups in the Border, Midland and West Regions region (17 in 2008; 16 in 2009; 13 in 2010 and 18 in 2011).