HUNDREDS OF BUSINESS STARTS AND JOBS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT

Thousands of people have been directly helped to set up in business or find suitable work since the start of this year, through the Local and Community Development Programme.

For instance, Donegal Local Development Company directly supported over 153 small family businesses to open up in the first 11 months of this year. That compares with 146 people who directly set up in small businesses upon finishing a course run by the Northside Partnership in Dublin.

Some companies focused on supporting people on the margins, for instance long-term unemployed people with mental health challenges, to better prepare for and find suitable work.

In our upcoming print edition, we have short reports from Cork, Dublin, Galway, Donegal and Laois showing how Local Development Companies are slowly but steadily getting people into business or helping them find suitable work. The courses and local programmes on offer are giving people opportunities they didn't have before.

These are jobs you don't hear about in IDA announcements, because they come about through the work of Local Development Companies, they usually involve the establishment of small or family businesses, and they're emerging one-by-one around the country.

Our reports indicate that thousands of people are benefitting and by that we mean finding work. The full tally should emerge in time through data-collection systems operating within the Programme.

- Allen Meagher, Editor