Up to 350 small food businesses will benefit from Food Academy Start, a new training programme launched by Bord Bia, SuperValu and the County Enterprise Boards.

YOUR child arrives home from school complaining he couldn’t eat his lunchtime sandwiches “because they were all soggy”.

AIB has introduced the ‘Job Creation Loan’ for small and medium businesses (SMEs).

THIS Fine Gael-Labour Government came into office nine months ago.

FARMERS in the south-east were given a welcome boost yesterday at a high profile Bord Bia regional food showcase in Kilkenny.

The Minister of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte has said that social enterprise has the potential to create 25,000 jobs over the next five years.

MORE than 2,000 tillage farmers are willing to plant sugar beet if a feasibility study proves that a new sugar and ethanol plant can be made profitable.

LEADER funds can legally be diverted by the Government into other rural development initiatives, EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said during his recent visit to the Dáil.

ANY attempt to take funding from Leader groups and give it to other agencies would be a breach of contract, according to Jack Roche of rural development company IRD Duhallow.

The Government is to target small business-owners, entrepreneurs and inventors with a series of workshops offering advice on how to turn ideas into new enterprises, according to the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan.

A series of eight business finance seminars to assist SMEs to gain greater understanding of financial, employment, tax and business supports information is to be held across the country in the coming weeks.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer today announced plans to shut down three of its Irish facilities and reduce operations at a fourth, with the loss of 785 jobs.

A €15 MILLION fund to help 2,400 redundant Dell and Banta Turnkey employees get back to work will be announced by the President of the European Commission when he visits Limerick today.

THE Bord Snip part was the easy bit.

THE Bord Snip report proposes total annual savings of €238 million in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment – savings which would include the loss of 600 jobs and involve sweeping changes to Fás, Forfás, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland among others.

Officials from Enterprise Ireland are being drafted into the top banks to help give out more loans to cash-strapped small businesses.

Tourism, transport and alternative employment are key to developing rural areas, the Green Party claimed today.

Kieran McDaid, PA

Willie Maxwell, director of InterTrade Ireland's Acumen programme aimed at small businesses, talks to David Clerkin.