Before we publish our annual accounts and report each year, we must first undergo an external audit overseen by the offices of the C&AG (Comptroller & Auditor General). This process is currently well underway for 2006. However, the process can be protracted, with the result that the annual report is usually not published until mid-year at the earliest.

The summary of the year’s activity provided therefore is inevitably a little out of date by the time you get to read it. Well for those of you that cannot wait until the publication of the annual report (and that might be interested?), I have provided below some snippets, which will give you a flavour of the activity which we were involved last year (2006): 

Grant-aided Projects

We received a total of 38 applications for grant-aid last year. This may not appear at first glance to be a lot, but you will have to bear in mind that our grant-aid is extremely selective (http://www.kceb.ie/fa.shtml). We always receive a lot more interest from potential applicants, but we discourage them from applying if we feel that they are ineligible for support. I would guess that only about 1 in 10 enquiries we receive for grant-aid result in an application (i.e. are eligible for grant-aid); 

28 (or 73%) of the grant applications were approved, 6 were refused (mainly on the grounds of being ineligible for financial assistance, lacking commercial viability or posing a risk of displacement) and a decision on 4 had been deferred pending receipt of additional information or documentation in support of their application at year end; 

We awarded a total of €425,370 in grant-aid to the 28 projects approved, giving an average grant of just over €15,000; 

16 of the projects grant-aided are local services, 9 are manufacturing operations and 3 have the potential to become Internationally Traded Services (ITS); 

12 of the projects are promoted by men, 12 are promoted by women, 2 are promoted jointly by a male & female partnership and 2 projects are promoted by community organisations; 

Prior to receiving approval for their project, some 12 promoters were already in business and received assistance to expand their operations and 16 were new start-up projects; 

The 28 projects approved have the potential to create an additional 52 full-time and 12 part-time jobs when fully implemented. 

Entrepreneurial & Capability Development (ECD)

We invested a total of €322,000 in ECD supports in 2006, ranging from the provision of information, business advice and training through to mentoring, technical assistance and management supports;   

 A total of 51 Enterprise Training & Management Programmes were organised and delivered, amounting to a total of over 1,000 training days;

Almost 470 people participated in our Training & Management Programmes and 57% of these were women;   

A total of 13 secondary schools registered in the Student Enterprise Awards competition in 2006 (http://www.studententerprise.ie/), with over 400 students participating in setting up businesses; 

A total of 228 people attended information seminars organised and/or supported by the CEB in 2006; 

186 small business owners availed of our mentoring service and a further 41 received technical assistance.  

Other Initiatives We also continued to provide the lead on implementing a number of actions, identified by the Kilkenny County Development Board (CDB) as being of priority over the next 3 years. These include:

1.       the development of a strategy for the establishment of a third-level education presence in Kilkenny, centred upon creative arts & industries. One of the projects which dovetails with this initiative is the nc4c (national centre for creativity) mentioned in an earlier post;

2.       the development of a local development model to facilitate economic and enterprise development in the smaller towns and villages in County Kilkenny. We are overseeing the delivery of a pilot project in Callan, which is hoped can be applied across a number of local communities in the county. Chief features of this pilot include an interagency Advisory Forum, a local community steering group and the employment of a Project Manager.

So as you can see from this brief account of output last year, we are involved in quite a wide range of activity. If there is anything that gives you ideas of how we might be able to help you, just let us know.

Sean.

www.kceb.ie