Minister Martin Outlines Enterprise Action Plan

Expert Group to Advise on ESG Implementation

The Government fully supports the establishment of an Expert Group to advise on implementing the ESG recommendations. The Minister will meet with the Expert Group comprising four senior figures representative of the enterprise sector with relevant Secretaries General. The Minister will report to Government on the implementation of the recommendations of the Enterprise Strategy Group twice a year. In preparing his report the Minister will meet with the Expert Group and his report shall reflect the views of the Group on the position regarding implementation progress. The Minister may request one or more members of the Group to make a presentation on particular issues to the Government meeting, which considers the Minister's reports.

Export Ireland – The internationalisation of Irish companies will be the key agenda item in the coming year. The Minister has had a number of meetings with Enterprise Ireland over the last number of months and has directed a complete business process and organisational re-engineering of Enterprise Ireland's overseas and marketing support division, which is currently being implemented. The Minister will make a detailed announcement in relation to the restructuring of Enterprise Ireland in the coming weeks

Graduate placement programme – The Minister has asked FAS and Enterprise Ireland to work together to expand and develop the existing FAS Graduate programme. This Programme created a unique group of graduates who have lived or are living in some of our most important export markets, e.g. Japan. In consultation with business EI will develop a pilot project to more precisely define enterprise needs, identify target sectors that would derive most benefit and help to construct the best type of programme to deliver tangible enterprise centred results. The Departments of Education and Science are in consultation with the Universities and Institutes of Technology to support the incorporation of sales and marketing techniques into Course delivery.

Technology Ireland

The Department has established a joint working group involving SFI, Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and Forfas to ensure the most effective operationalisation of the Technology Ireland concept. The group is developing proposals to ensure that the Department's very substantial investment in research, technology and innovation is effectively leveraged to meet the targets set out in the National R&D Action Plan. These include the aim of seeing business expenditure on R&D increase from €1.1 billion in 2003 to €2.5billion in 2010. In recognition of the importance of this challenge, the spend on R&D by Enterprise Ireland is planned to increase from €72 million in 2004 to €92 million in 2005. A new Cabinet Sub-Committee on Research and Development has been established and has been charged with responsibility to provide a detailed road-map towards the achievement of a 2.5% spend on R&D in line with the Lisbon target.

Enterprise Networks

The Government supports the establishment of networks to meet strategic objectives in areas like training. Enterprise Ireland, in conjunction with enterprise stakeholders, is developing a programme to examine new networking models. There is much potential for North/South benefits to flow from an all island approach to this recommendation. The experience of InterTradeIreland will add considerably to designing new networking models, as has the positive experience of Skillnets, which demonstrated the importance of networks in training and research.

Greater Agency Co-ordination of Department’s Agencies

There should be greater co-ordination between Forfás, IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland. The Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment in consultation with the agencies under its remit will identify any co-ordination problems and the most suitable mechanisms to address them.

"One Step Up" Initiative - The Government has endorsed this initiative and the recent additional funding of €27million in the Budget is being provided to FAS for in-company training in 2005. FAS has proposed a series of initiatives, which respond to the One-Step Up initiative as well as particular concerns dealing with literacy and numeracy in the workforce. An Inter-Departmental Committee is overseeing progress on the recommendations of the Task Force on Life Long Learning.

Concluding, Minister Martin acknowledged the support of the cross department high-level committee, which contributed to the development of the Action Plan and said “the Government believes that the implementation of the recommendations will contribute to the embedding and further development of strategies appropriate to the new realities and challenges facing the Irish economy”.

ESG Action Plan available at: http://www.djei.ie/enterprise/support/esgactionplan.htm

ENDS/ETE 1317