Enterprise Ireland work with approximately 5,000 companies through a network of market and sector advisors based across 10 national offices and 33 international offices. They also work with the network of 31 Local Enterprise Offices through their Centre of Excellence to support small and micro businesses.
Enterprise Ireland currently employs 556 (FTE) staff in its Irish offices. This figure includes permanent staff and staff on fixed term contracts but excludes Irish Graduates and Work Experience Placement Students.
EI also currently employs 169.5 (FTE) people in its overseas offices. This number includes expats, locally hired staff and staff participating on EI’s International Graduate Programme.
My Department has ensured that Enterprise Ireland has the necessary resources to drive awareness and to assist companies to prepare for Brexit.
Enterprise Ireland’s funding for 2017 included an additional €1.7 million to assist in the recruitment of 39 Brexit specific posts. 37 of these posts have been filled to date and recruitment is ongoing for the remaining posts.
A further €1.3m was provided in Budget 2018 to enable EI to recruit approximately 18 additional staff this year. To date, 8 staff have been recruited and the remaining posts will be recruited as soon as possible.
The specific information requested by the Deputy in relation to the budget allocation for Enterprise Ireland since its establishment up to 2018 is a large volume of information. Therefore it was not possible to collate all the information in the relevant timeframe. This additional information will be supplied separately as soon as it is available.