The department’s Regional Enterprise Plans are developed by regional stakeholders and focus on undertaking collaborative initiatives that can help deliver enterprise growth in each of nine regions across Ireland. They contribute to the Programme for Government commitment to achieving more balanced regional development.
These ‘bottom-up’ Regional Enterprise Plans complement and build on core strategies of the enterprise agencies, the Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs), local authorities and the wider range of stakeholder directly involved in supporting enterprise development in the regions.
Added value and increased impact
The plans aim to bring added value and increased impact through regional and local actors working collaboratively to address challenges and foster new enterprise development opportunities across the country.
The current Regional Enterprise Plans seek to:
- complement and translate national enterprise policy in a regional context
- facilitate collaboration regionally to address prioritised ecosystem gaps and opportunities
- use collective insight and available regional funding to progress collaborative initiatives to enable enterprise growth and therefore support job creation in each region
Actions to address the following national policy challenges have been incorporated in the current plans:
- building enterprise resilience in the context of external global shocks
- the twin transition imperative for enterprises to digitalise and contribute to a net-zero economy
- improving competitiveness through effective placemaking
- capitalising on existing and emerging sectoral strengths and capabilities through smart specialisation
The development of the current Regional Enterprise Plans was done in parallel with the creation of the National Smart Specialisation Strategy for Innovation 2022 -2027. The stakeholder consultation events undertaken as part of the development of these Regional Enterprise Plans acted as an entrepreneurial discovery process which has contributed valuable insights to the National Smart Specialisation Strategy.
Implementation
The department oversees the implementation of the Regional Enterprise Plans at national level, while delivery in each region is driven on the ground by the Regional Steering Committee and Programme Manager.
Each Steering Committee comprises representatives of the local authorities, LEOs, Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Regional Skills Manager Higher and Further Education Institutes, Education and Training Boards, Regional Assembly, private sector and others, and is chaired by a senior level private sector businessperson.
The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Ministers of State, jointly chair a National Oversight Group which oversees implementation and encourages sharing of best practice and collaboration across the regions. The Chairperson of each plan is required to submit a mid-term and a final progress report outlining the implementation of the actions contained in their plan.
The nine Regional Enterprise Plans
Midlands Regional Enterprise Plan
North-East Regional Enterprise Plan
North-West Regional Enterprise Plan
West Regional Enterprise Plan
Mid-West Regional Enterprise Plan
South-East Regional Enterprise Plan
Mid-East Regional Enterprise Plan
Dublin Regional Enterprise Plan
South-West Regional Enterprise Plan
Regional enterprise funding
Regional enterprise funding is required to drive implementation of the Regional Enterprise Plans. Since 2017, the department, through Enterprise Ireland, has approved €126 million in funding to support 79 innovative enterprise projects across the country. Many of the projects funded are a direct result of the Regional Enterprise Plans.
€145 million in funding, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, has been secured to 2027 to support projects aligned to the Regional Enterprise Plans. The ‘Smart Regions Enterprise Innovation Scheme’ supports innovative clusters, local infrastructure projects, programmatic supports to business and feasibility and priming