BUSINESSES BACKED by State agency Enterprise Ireland added more than €2 billion to export sales last year, figures released by the organisation show.

Enterprise Ireland, which is charged with supporting home-grown businesses, published its annual report for 2011 yesterday.

The figures show that exports from Enterprise Ireland-supported companies reached a record €15.2 billion last year. That included €2.14 billion of new export sales.

Its client companies created 9,076 new jobs, but 9,070 people employed by such businesses lost their jobs during the year, leaving a net of just six new posts.

Launching the report, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton, said this was an improvement on previous years when the numbers employed fell.

In 2010 more than 5,000 people lost their jobs in Enterprise Ireland-supported companies and employment fell by a total of 30,000 in three years to last year.

Mr Bruton argued that the 2011 numbers showed that employment had stabilised.

The organisation’s chief executive, Frank Ryan, said more than 141,000 people were employed in Enterprise Ireland-supported businesses. The companies involved were responsible directly and indirectly for employing more than 300,000 people, and spend €18 billion on goods and services.

The figures are based on the results of a survey of all Enterprise Ireland’s client companies.

The agency’s accounts show it paid more than €196.3 million in grants and other financial supports during the year.

Of this it paid €194 million directly, while the balance went to organisations such as the county enterprise boards, which in turn give grants in their own areas.

Its administrative costs fell to €89.7 million in 2011 from €94 million the previous year. During the year Enterprise Ireland contributed €2 million to the AIB startup accelerator fund, which is designed to provide finance to new businesses.

Mr Bruton acknowledged that the banks themselves still had to overcome difficulties when it came to providing finance to new businesses.

He said the banks had devoted so much effort to lending to property developers in the last decade that their skills in other areas collapsed. “To be fair they are seeking to re-engineer themselves,” he said, adding that they were making some progress.

Mr Ryan said yesterday that a scheme launched last year attracted 10 start-up companies from outside the Republic to set up here.

These include mobile games developer 2Paper Dolls, language-teaching software specialist All, which is based in Galway, credit-risk assessor Rockboro Analytics, and fraud control software company Xintec.

Mr Ryan said the 10 companies were involved in areas such as information technology, medical devices and clean technology. Britain remained the biggest market for Enterprise Ireland-supported exporters in 2011, and the value of sales increased to €5.5 billion from €5.3 billion. However, its share of the total slipped to 36 per cent from over 40 per cent in 2010. Northern Europe was next best with €2.16 billion

Asia Pacific, home to high-growth economies such as China, accounted for €978 million of the total. Mr Ryan said the agency believed there was huge potential for expansion in this region.