Useful Links

InterTradeIreland www.intertradeireland.com

InterTradeIreland is one of the six cross-border bodies created under the Good Friday Agreement, with a specific legislative mandate to: ‘ exchange information and co-ordinate work on trade, business development and related matters, in areas where the two administrations specifically agree it would be in their mutual interest’.

The InterTradeIreland Corporate Plan for the period 2005-2007 contains our Mission Statement: “To enhance the global competitiveness of the all-island economy to the mutual benefit of Ireland and Northern Ireland through measures such as the creation of knowledge-intensive all-island trade and business development networks and the implementation of all-island trade and business development programmes”.

InterTradeIreland will develop sectorally specific all-island trade and business development networks by working directly with selected industry and trade associations from the North and the South with whom we will build successful collaborative partnerships. We will also continue to develop networks among various Communities of Interest such as Micro-Enterprises, Universities and other Third-Level Institutions and around specific Areas of Excellence such as our EquityNetwork, All Island Benchmarking Forum and All Island Supply Chain Forum.

The MicroTrade Programme

The MicroTrade Programme aims to promote cross-border trade and business co-operation specifically within the micro-enterprise sector (1-10 employees) and is a joint initiative between InterTradeIreland, the City and County Enterprise Boards and Enterprise Northern Ireland. MicroTrade operates on two levels:

1. It seeks to build an all-island network of micro-enterprise support bodies, bringing together the City and County Enterprise Boards in the Republic of Ireland and the Local Enterprise Agencies in Northern Ireland.
2. The programme offers a range of supports direct to micro-enterprises interested in exploring all-island trade and co-operation, including a series of major networking events for micro-enterprises and a support programme for businesses tendering for contracts on a cross-border basis

The Acumen Programme

The InterTradeIreland Acumen Programme is a cross-border business development programme designed by InterTradeIreland to stimulate cross-border trade amongst small and medium enterprises in both parts of Ireland. The programme concentrates exclusively on stimulating cross-border trade by assisting individual SMEs with tailored consultancy and salary support mechanisms for market builders, in cross-border markets in Ireland. The programme is available to eligible companies, (Manufacturing and Internationally Tradable Services) across the island, subject to availability of funding. Acumen programme provides four support options:

1 Consultancy

2 Marketing/Sales Salary Support

3 Prospector

4 In exceptional growth opportunities, a combination of more than one of the other three options.

The FUSION Programme

FUSION is an all island knowledge transfer initiative operating across the island of Ireland. It facilitates cross-border tri-partite partnerships and projects between:

Companies: with technology based development needs

Academic Institutes: such as colleges, universities,institutes of technology and specialist research centres with specific technological expertise and