The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton T.D. today (Friday) published the South East Employment Action Plan on foot of on-going concerns about the persistently above-average rates of unemployment in the South East Region. The report was prepared by Forfás at the request of the Minister and incorporates inputs from all the enterprise agencies, other relevant state agencies, local authorities, CEBs and educational institutions from the region.
A meeting last week of all these stakeholders was convened by Minister Bruton where the actions to be undertaken by each body were discussed and agreed ahead of the publication of the final report.
Commenting on the launch of the report Minister Bruton said;
"The South East region has persistently had higher than average levels of unemployment compared to the rest of the country. On top of that it has fared disproportionately badly over the years of the recent economic collapse. Since 2007 it has seen its unemployment rate jump from 4.9% in 2007, marginally above the country wide average of 4.6%, to 18.2% against a national average of 14.3%. Notwithstanding this, as the report states, Waterford and the South East region have undergone a period of catch-up in terms of infrastructure investment and are better positioned than at any time in the past.
"However, compared to other regions the South East’s industrial base has not developed strong clusters in specific sectors that can then help attract future investments. The multinational sector is proportionately smaller than in other regions but, despite this, there are still 66 such companies in the region employing 12,650 people.
"The reality is that the structural challenges that the region faces have built up over many years and will not be reversed with a simple set of actions. What is required is to build a stronger enterprise base in the region as a whole. This report today identifies many actions that can help deliver on that ambition of having a stronger local enterprise base but it will only achieve so much. There are challenges for all agencies in the region to help build up the region’s competitive advantage and then to promote it in a co-ordinated manner.
"In fact, one of the key issues that no single agency or Government Department can hope to address is the issue of the overall coherence of the region’s "value proposition" to investors from home or abroad. What has arisen again and again in consultation with all the relevant stakeholders and agencies in the region is the need for greater co-ordination of effort from all those with an interest in improving the enterprise potential of the region.
"This was brought to the fore when all the agencies, local authorities, CEBs, education institutions and other local representative groups met in my Department last week. That meeting was the first time that a group of that nature had met collectively with the focus solely on what can be done to improve the region’s fortunes. I intend that for the coming year to facilitate a series of further meetings of that same group as a means of both monitoring the implementation of the proposals in this report but also as a means of helping forge greater co-operation and collaboration between all the various stakeholders across the region.
"A full set of actions and further analysis is outlined in the report in full but it is worth noting a number of specific issues of importance:
FDI: IDA will assign a clear priority to the region with a view to attracting additional investment to the area particularly in sectors like Life Sciences, Financial Services and new areas like Clean Tech.
IDA will work closely with Local Authorities and other agencies and will ensure that the region is optimally promoted and wins more site visits from prospective investors.
The IDA will continue an intensive process of promoting a replacement company for the existing TalkTalk facility and its qualified workforce through its extensive network of international offices.
IDA recognises Bellview as one of the top two preferred sites in Ireland for elements of the Clean Technology Sector and will work with local stakeholders to promote it to a targeted set of international investors.
Enterprise An immediate competitive call for feasibility funding for new start-ups in Support the South East region will be launched.
Funding of up to €20,000 per project will be made available for 10 proposals by EI;
Enterprise Ireland, in co-operation with the County Enterprise Boards, will hold more Ideagen (networking roadshow for ideas generation) and Enterprise Start (workshops for business start-ups) events in the region from Q4 2011 onwards;
The Enterprise Platform Programme (training, funding and mentoring programme for entrepreneurs) to incubate early stage businesses will recommence in a new format in Q1 2012;
Enterprise Ireland will systematically reach out to companies on a one to one basis that would have less active interaction with EI, to assess potential for exports and employment.
A First Flight workshop, aimed at companies developing export markets for their products, will be convened in Waterford focussed on the UK, North America and Asia supported with Mentors and building on those conducted in October/November 2011;
Innovation Through an aggressive marketing campaign EI will promote additional take up of Innovation Vouchers (€5,000 grants to invest in innovation) in the South East building on the success of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) in completing voucher projects commenced in Q4 2011;
Place additional graduates, through EI, in companies via a new Innovation Graduate Placement Programme to ramp up the number of innovation projects within companies. This will be launched in Q1 2012;
Linkages The sector teams within the enterprise development agencies (EI, IDA and SFI) will develop a programme of structured engagement with the key research groups in the Institutes of Technology within the region to identify potential collaboration opportunities with existing enterprise in the region. This will be based on WIT identified three areas of particular strength in ICT, pharmaceutical and eco-innovation research. IDA and EI will work with other agencies to exploit the clear regional opportunities in Life Sciences, CleanTech and Food to build up the competitive strengths and establish the important linkages these sectors need to develop.
The enterprise agencies will stimulate increased linkages between firms – to facilitate the forging of relationships through sub-supply and/or collaborative arrangements – including contracted research, outsourced services, materials procurement, partnerships etc.;
"These actions, as I have pointed out, can only do so much to improve the region’s enterprise base. But it is just a start. A challenge that has built up over many years will not be turned around in a matter of months, but I am determined that we should make a start with the measures proposed in this report. More than that, I am keen over the coming twelve months to see the agencies and the regional stakeholders come together and help drive the positive changes that are clearly overdue. I will give them every support and backing that I and my Department can offer."
The report can be found at: http://www.forfas.ie/publication/search.jsp?ft=/publications/2011/title,8631,en.php