STIMULATING AND SUPPORTING NEW BUSINESS IN IRELAND

WESTBIC participates in Interreg 3c ADEP sub project aimed at developing sustainable micro-enterprise and SME networks

By James Donlon, June 30, 2005

WESTBIC has been accepted as a sub-project partner for the ADEP project - Action to Develop, Experiment and Mainstream innovative support schemes to assist territorial development. This Interreg IIIC Regional Framework Operation project seeks to strengthen regional policy through the development of local and regional capacity building.

The main partner in the region is the BMW Regional Assembly, whilst a number of sub-projects have been selected for support through the progrmme, including WESTBIC's project aimed at assistng micro-enterprise in the Lough Ree area through the development of sustainable support networks.

The local partners for this sub-project include the Enterprise Boards in counties Longford, Westmeath and Roscommon, along with Athlone Institute of Technology. A number of actions are underway aimed at improving the performance of selected companies in the region through the creation of suitable third level linkages as a step towards capacity and capability building in these companies.

From an inter-regional perspective, there are seven partner regions, based in France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Ireland and Poland (2). The inter-regional exchanges will be used to share the experience and expertise of partners from a European perspective aimed at generating an EU model for Capacity Building and creating new linkages that allow local development bodies to feed into regional policy making.

Further details about this project are available on the project website at www.adep-europe.com