FOSTERING FINGAL’S ECONOMIC POTENTIAL

FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL:

FOSTERING FINGAL’S ECONOMIC POTENTIAL

Combining rural with urban and tourism with ICT and pharma, plus the added attraction of Dublin Airport for key FDI decisionmakers, Fingal is exceptionally well positioned to prosper.

Prior to her move to a new executive position within Fingal County Council, Network Magazine spoke to Emer O’Gorman who reflected on how the Council’s Department of Economic, Enterprise, Tourism and Cultural Development, of which she has been Director for the past four years, has been trying to ensure that Fingal delivers on this promise. This is a task that will now be taken on by incoming Director John Quinlivan.

The Department of Economic, Enterprise, Tourism and Cultural Development has an annual budget of just over €50 million, including the provision for local libraries. That’s a sizeable portion of the Council’s total budget of just under €300 million and it indicates the importance that Fingal CoCo places on economic development. The Department has a wide remit, that ranges from running Local Enterprise Offices dealing with micro enterprises employing under 10 people to engaging with large FDI investments and working with the IDA to encourage investment in the county – and much more alongside that.

The Department, for example, is also responsible, for example, for the management of the county’s heritage properties, the activities of the Council’s Events Unit and the Balbriggan Socio-Economic Strategy. Of the last, she says: “This is a slightly unusual piece of work. It’s the first time something like this has been undertaken by a local authority. It involves looking at how a town functions, how it goes about ‘placemaking’ and establishing its unique identity. We’re engaging with the local community, both the residents and businesses, to establish a base from which to regenerate the town. That’s a huge piece of work.”

Fingal’s Directorate of Economic Development was established in 2014, when changes to the Local Government Act placed a strong emphasis on economic development at a local level. Up till then, while many local authorities, including Fingal, did have varying levels of activity in this area none boasted dedicated departments.

Emer O’Gorman joined Fingal CoCo four years after this reform. She came from Louth County Council, where she had been a Director of Services, and before that she had been with South Dublin County Council for 21 years. Nearly half of her career to date has been spent in economic development roles of various kinds.

In Fingal CoCo the Director of Economic, Enterprise, Tourism and Cultural Development is a member of the senior management team reporting directly to the Chief Executive. “The Department has a broad remit but is fortunate in having a very good team. Apart from the libraries and cultural responsibilities, there are about 50 staff, including three seniors reporting directly to the Director – one looks after the Local Enterprise Office, another economic development and the property portfolio and the third tourism, heritage and events.”

But the department does not operate in isolation. “Even though it is not necessarily a service delivery department, it is like a spider in the middle of the web. Everything it does affects at least one other department,. A lot of the Department of Economic, Enterprise, Tourism and Cultural Development’s work lays the groundwork for bigger things. For example, a lot of preparatory work was required in advance of outdoor dining and pedestrianisation in some of our towns and villages during the pandemic. We had to engage with businesses to see whether this would actually work for them. So I spent a lot of my time having the conversation and listening, really listening, to what the needs of a town, a business community or individuals are.”

Fingal is always keen to learn from best practice and before COVID hit Emer visited Seattle with Fingal Chamber CEO Anthony Cooney to see how it is using a “business clustering” approach to foster economic growth. She also visited Munich, an exemplar in the clustering of similar types of indigenous business alongside a university ecosystem.

Fingal CoCo is also the lead on the Dublin-Belfast Economic Corridor, a collaboration involving eight local authorities working closely with the Shared Ireland Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach, Invest NI Intertrade Ireland and other partners in the North. Here, too, it is seeking to harness best practice from similar approaches to economic development using corridors, for example ones from Malmo to Stockholm and from Seattle to Vancouver. “At times the political environment may be challenging but there is a very strong willingness at the local authority and business levels to be proactive in that space,” Emer notes.

Responding to COVID

“COVID was like a shockwave for us,” Emer says. “Many of our economic development plans were put to one side as the Council looked at quick implementation of direct interventions to help businesses in Fingal,” she says.

The department looked after the roll-out of the Restart Grant, for example. “The imprimatur we had from the Chief Executive was to get the money out as quickly as possible and we were very successful in doing that. Then we were responsible for rolling out Restart Plus and the Small Business Assistance scheme.”

In tandem with this, the department started to look at other kinds of interventions the council could make to help businesses in the county. The “Fingal In It Together Charter,” which is all about local businesses helping local businesses, and a scheme to allow businesses draw down grants of between €3,000 to €5000 to improve the look of their premises, were two initiatives devised through this process. Emer notes that as well as being a signatory to the Charter, Fingal Chamber was a key partner in that initiative.

Fingal CoCo also took the lead in finding a way for restaurants and cafes to commence on-street outdoor business. “There are a large number of tourism and hospitality businesses in the county, especially in the coastal villages, and they were being absolutely decimated by COVID. So we came up with a scheme whereby a business could apply for a ‘parklet’ – essentially a covered wooden unit built in a parking space – to create an outdoor dining area.”

While the idea sounds simple, it involved detailed consultation with the Gardaí, the Department of Justice and various other agencies on licensing and a myriad of other legal issues. This approach, designed and led out in Fingal, was subsequently replicated in other counties. “It was nice achievement, because something had to give in that space and we were able to get a resolution that worked for everybody,” Emer reflects.

In terms of general economic development, Emer says Fingal CoCo wants to see its towns and villages thrive and to see local businesses, both ones indigenous to the county and ones that have chosen to locate in the Fingal region, do well, to expand and flourish.

There are lessons, too, to be learned from COVID, she says. “Driven by people working from home, people have been rediscovering what businesses are available in their immediate locality. And that’s as true on the B2B side of things as it is for individuals and families. And we’ve constantly been trying to come up with imaginative ways to foster that community engagement.

“But it is still a very, very challenging time. Some of our smaller towns and villages, in particular, did benefit from people working from home during the lockdowns rather than heading to work each day into Dublin city centre or the IFSC. That has shone a light on gaps in how our villages and towns function. They may have been here for hundreds of years, but their functionality is very different now and we need to look at what interventions are needed. We need to do a lot on their aesthetics, for example. Pedestrianisation, too, which was originally just a temporary measure, stimulated new businesses in a number of locations. The Council now need to undertake proper design and engineering works to secure those benefits permanently. A lot of the focus now is on looking at master planning for towns and looking at how village centers operate, looking at the appropriate commercial, retail and social mix and how to revitalise the public realm.”

Emer believes that the chamber have a vital role to play in supporting and fostering the development of businesses. “The business community is so important to the success of Fingal. From Dublin Airport, which has a huge footprint in the county, to a small agri-food business out in Rush to the sole traders operating on the streets of our towns or villages, they are all hugely important to the county, they are our lifeblood. And for us, as a service provider, our relationship with the Chamber is absolutely paramount. A lot of what we do is learning by experience and then trying to design new interventions or new ways of looking at how we can encourage businesses in the area. And in doing that it’s really important that we have a good relationship with the chamber because they’re very much in tune with what business needs and give us a direct connection to that.”

Emer O'Gorman