Last week, Taoiseach and Minister Bruton met with 20 regional businesses from across the country in Athlone, Westmeath to hear their views on building the right conditions to create jobs. As part of this conversation, which was livestreamed on Merrion Street, Taoiseach and Minister Bruton announced a new €40 million competitive regional fund with the key aim of boosting job creation across the country.
The fund is part of the Regional Action Plan for Jobs process, which will see 220,000 jobs created in Ireland in the coming years. 7 of the 8 Regional Jobs Plans have now been published with key targets set for each region.
The fund aims to incentivise collaboration and innovation in each region and to reward the regions who come forward with the projects that have the greatest capacity to create jobs. Minister Bruton believes that by making the funding competitive, it will bring the best out of the organisations in each region, and incentivise the greatest possible level of innovation and collaboration locally.
How does the funding work?
To win funding a project must involve collaboration from different players such as local authorities, education institutions, state agencies and private sector bodies within each region. This is to incentivise organisations to work together on a regional basis in the interests of jobs creation.
The applications process will be managed by Enterprise Ireland who will take into account factors including jobs impact, collaboration and innovation.
An initial call was made under this call which received 141 expressions of interest
What types of projects can apply for funding?
The fund is to be rolled out on a phased basis under five key themes:
- regional accelerator projects
- opportunities to drive greater company & sector collaboration and clustering in the regions
- driving procurement opportunities for start-ups and established small businesses
- strengthening third-level institutions as drivers of regional enterprise
- strengthening the start-up ecosystem on a local level.
€3 million is being made available for investment with accelerator managers to increase the number of accelerators in the regions outside of Dublin, and issued an open competitive call to stakeholders to signal their interest in establishing accelerators. It is targeted that a further €3m will be leveraged with additional private sector investment to support this entrepreneurship initiative.
Regional Action Plan for Jobs
The Regional Action Plan for Jobs lay out specific targets for each region aimed at ensuring that the unemployment rate in every region is within 1% of the average across the State and 10-15% employment growth in the coming years. The plans also set out a target of achieving an increase of at least 25% in the number of start-ups in the region, and a 25% improvement in the survival rate of new businesses.
Seven of the eight Regional Jobs Plans have now been published, covering every area of the country except Dublin, with publication of the final Dublin plan scheduled for the coming weeks.
For more information
Check out Enterprise Ireland's website for more information on the €40m competitive fund.
Find out more about the Regional Action Plan for Jobs.
Check out 8 highlights to know from Action Plan for Jobs 2016.