Community Enterprise Centres in the East Coast provide space in a supportive environment for budding entrepreneurs and serve to help the development of entrepreneurship locally in urban and rural locations. Since the launch of the first National Community Enterprise Centre scheme in 1989, €61.4 million has been approved for the development of small business through development grants through to management and mentoring of key staff.
As Deputy Doyle points out “It is well recognised that 2 out of 3 jobs in Ireland are created from small business and this microenterprise sector is vital to having a full and well development economic policy that covers all areas. The trend of declining occupancy levels and tenant numbers seems to have bottomed out in mid-2012, with a return to growth in occupancy levels since that time. “
On a recent visit to Arklow Business Enterprise Centre Deputy Doyle reiterated that “Now more than ever, the Community Enterprise Centres are a pivotal focal point for business start-up’s and directly roll into the Action Plan for Jobs 2014 in terms of job creation, small business support, mentoring and the delivery of assistance to entrepreneurs and microenterprise via our new Local Enterprise Office. There is a healthy distribution of enterprise sectors represented in our centres, with the IT, Professional Services, Social Enterprise, Education and Training and Manufacturing being the largest sectors”
Doyle adds “Capital expenditure requirements over the next few years on upgrading of space rather than development of new space will be the key focus with implementing energy efficient measures seen as high priority as well as additional facilities to assist the food sector .Enterprise centres are a location of favour among social and community based businesses, no doubt due to their all-inclusive and open nature of operation. These centres will play a very important role in our job creation targets particularly from an indigenous business”