Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 November 2021
6. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment further to Parliamentary Question No. 80 of 15 September 2021, the status of the new west regional enterprise plan to 2024; if the plan has been completed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52891/21]
Amharc ar fhreagraMy question is very straightforward. I am asking for the status of the new west regional enterprise plan to 2024.
I thank the Deputy for the question. Regional enterprise development and sustainable local job creation is a key policy priority of the Department and the Government. The Department is overseeing the development of nine new regional enterprise plans to 2024, including for the west region covering the county the Deputy represents. These are bottom-up plans developed by regional stakeholders working together to identify growth opportunities, recognise vulnerabilities and address ecosystem gaps to enable sustainable job creation in businesses throughout the regions through collaborative regional actions. The new west regional enterprise plan to 2024, which covers Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, will complement and build on the core activities of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and local employment offices. There will also be greater involvement of local authorities as well as educational stakeholders and institutions. It will involve the wider range of State bodies involved in enterprise development in the region, with a focus on creating sustainable employment opportunities.
The Minister of State, Deputy Robert Troy, is driving the delivery of the new plan in the west and he has been engaging directly with the west regional steering committee. This is made up of regional stakeholders, including representatives of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, local employment offices, local authorities, regional skills fora, the Western Development Commission and others. The group is chaired by Evelyn O'Toole, founder and CEO of Complete Laboratory Solutions.
The regional stakeholders in the west region are finalising their work and expect to sign off the draft plan in early November all going well. Once this is done it is intended to publish and launch the west regional enterprise plan along with all of the other new plans before the end of the year. To assist the regional enterprise plans, the Department, through Enterprise Ireland, has made available to date more than €126 million in regional enterprise funding to aid locally led regional enterprise development projects. Of this, more than €18.8 million has been approved for nine regional enterprise projects for the west under the regional enterprise development fund and, more recently, the regional enterprise transition scheme. We discussed this in a previous parliamentary question submitted by the Deputy. I know she is a believer in the strategies.
I am pleased to see positive news on the jobs front for the west with announcements this year, even though it has been a difficult year, by IDA Ireland of more than 400 jobs in Galway and 30 jobs in Ballina.
I thank the Minister of State and I appreciate his answer. IDA Ireland is very important, as is Enterprise Ireland. The Minister of State referred to bottom-up plans. These do not seem to be happening. I welcome that the plan will be published very soon and that it will be published before Christmas. I am thinking, for example, of wool. It has taken donkey's years to get a feasibility study for wool, which has huge possibilities.
I am looking at seaweed, on which we still do not have a national policy. It is one of the fantastic possibility areas for the west of Ireland. I am also looking at the islands, on which we have no policy. How does this fit in? This is the first plan since a pandemic was declared and it is certainly the first plan and opportunity since both a climate and a biodiversity emergency were declared. The only thing I see when I look through the various pieces of literature is that it talks about eco-gaps, which I would welcome if it was talking about the gaps in the ecosystem, but it is actually talking about business in a strange way because we have to do things differently. Is that not the case? We have all agreed on this. Will this plan be different and has it taken cognisance of the two emergencies I have mentioned, plus the pandemic?
I presume and hope the Deputy has made a submission to the plan because she has expressed some very good ideas there. The regional plan is meant to reflect all of the local ideas and it is genuinely a bottom-up process. I do not chair this plan but I chair four other ones and the Tánaiste chairs the Dublin one. The Minister of State, Deputy Troy, also chairs four. In all cases - in the plans I, the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, and the Tánaiste chair - we have taken the same approach. We have reached out for public consultation with all the stakeholders, namely, local authorities, chambers of commerce, anybody involved in business, the education system and existing companies which have ideas. This is very much meant to fund local ideas and initiatives.
I completely agree with the Deputy on the opportunity presented by seaweed. To make that happen, there has to be a very straightforward conversation involving the stakeholders who have a long tradition of harvesting the seaweed in a very sustainable way. It is about finding the right home for a seaweed strategy. Much research work has been carried out for the Project Ireland 2040 plan in regard to the marine, which I know the Deputy was involved in. I also attend the meetings on that. That strategy is in place and can lead to an opportunity for seaweed.
On the committee on wool, which is now up and running, it took a little bit of work to get that agreed with the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, who brought it together. Again, it is trying to find a source, a market and a use for the wool. I am from that background and I know that years ago wool had a great value but now it does not. It is up to us, working regionally and locally, to find initiatives to make that happen. I have no doubt the Deputy made a submission and we can look at all the suggestions made by her.
I have a concern still on top-down rather than bottom-up if it has taken this long for a Government to commission feasibility studies on wool. There has, therefore, been too much consensus on the way forward as opposed to looking at our assets and how we use them. Anyone with a bit of sense would realise that wool has great value, from insulation to remediation for bogs, just to mention two of its uses. We had public meetings on seaweed but we still do not have a policy on it.
These are two indigenous industries but there are many more. I do not see an emphasis on sustainable, indigenous industries in the west of Ireland, bearing in mind that the last regional assembly report said the north and the west suffered disproportionately from Covid-19 as opposed to anywhere else. I am concerned. It is difficult to put in submissions, to keep an eye on county and city development plans and to speak in the Dáil. Surely there must be enough people within Government to say that seaweed is the growth area with the maximum potential for lives in the west of Ireland.
I want to be completely clear with the Deputy that these plans are meant to be bottom-up. I have sat around the table when the very first versions of these plans were put in place and I can assure the Deputy that it was all local people who were around the table with me when we went through each and every idea. The Deputy and I discussed these during one of my first set of parliamentary questions in this Department. This is the first time the Deputy has suggested wool to me, even though I am familiar with it. I am just mentioning our conversation but I will pass this information on to the Minister of State, Deputy Troy.
This is what these plans are about. Even when the regional plans are published in a couple of weeks' time, there is enough scope there to add in some more changes because a fund has been put in place. It was confirmed in the national development plan and again in the budget we had a couple of weeks ago. That is additional money to fund regional ideas and projects.
I refer again to the Department of Rural and Community Development which will have close to €1 billion over the next four years. There are certainly enough resources out there to fund initiatives and ideas. It involves the bringing forward of ideas by both the locals as well as the State agencies. It is very much not the case that this is a regional plan led by the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, or any of our national agencies. These are meant to be local plans.
The Deputy’s county has been quite successful over the last two rounds in drawing down a good deal of money to fund projects and I wish to see these projects implemented at a faster pace. That is something that we are going to do. The wool committee is finally up and running but it is not up to the Government to find a market for every product out there. It is up to us to work together through our agencies with all those interested bodies and I am happy to do that, as is the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, and the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, and we will continue to do that. I completely agree with the Deputy on the issue of seaweed. It is something that we can probably work on together in that we also need initiative in this House to bring such issues forward.
