It has been announced today that up to €3m is being made available for investment with accelerator managers to increase the number of accelerators in the regions outside of Dublin.
The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton has issued an open competitive call to stakeholders to signal their interest in establishing accelerators.
The scheme is the first competitive initiative to be launched under the €40m competitive regional jobs fund announced by the Government on Friday 15th January. It is targeted that a further €3m will be leveraged with additional private sector investment to support this entrepreneurship initiative.
The funding has been provided by the Department of Jobs, through Enterprise Ireland who are interested in funds that will support entrepreneurship outside of Dublin in key strategic sectors including; Food, Agritech, ICT, Cleantech, Lifesciences, Financial Services, Internationally Traded Services, and Manufacturing.
CEO of Enterprise Ireland, Julie Sinnamon commented, "The National Policy Statement on Entrepreneurship noted that a key challenge is to develop the regional spread of start-up activity by enhancing the start-up environment outside Dublin.
"It also noted that this will include working to develop targeted accelerators where gaps exist to enhance the quality of start-ups, with a particular focus on the regional start-up ecosystem.
"This Scheme has been specifically designed to meet that challenge and it forms a core part of Enterprise Ireland’s strategic objective of supporting the creation of a greater number of successful start-ups across the country."
Source: www.businessworld.ie