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AN INVESTMENT FUND of €125 million for small and medium businesses was announced today by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton.
The capital fund aims to address the equity gap for companies that need capital for expansion and will be managed by the London based MML Growth Capital.
Enterprise Ireland has committed €25 million under the Government’s Development Capital Scheme, with AIB, the European Investment Fund, GoldPoint Partners, and two United States subsidiaries of the Cigna Corporation making up the balance.
Create and innovate
The Irish Software Association (ISA) welcomed the funding announcement stating that while the fund will not solve the funding gap, it will help tech businesses “create” and “innovate”.
Edel Creely, ISA Chair and Managing Director of Trilogy Technologies, said it will give some SMEs access to funding to finance potential new revenue streams and to export globally.
She said it also gives a strong signal to Ireland’s SME community that the government recognises the potential of the SME sector to deliver jobs and an innovation-intensive economy.
Minister Bruton said that today’s announcement will mean that the first funds under this scheme will now start flowing into the market which will mean that more companies will be able to access the required development capital, enabling them to expand into export markets and create new jobs.
Lets hope it goes to small and medium business, not small snd medium quangos..
Newstalk today mentioned that the last two similar schemes with budgets of €150million and €90million saw no takers for the first and only €1.6million granted in the latter. Bruton’s latest announcement is all huff and no puff by the sounds of it. How much of the new €125million budget will be “used” in administration?
lets hope they pay their workers when they get them and not end up in and out of labour courts rights commisions rulings. yep, its rampant, so they much prefer to hire those who ‘may’ not be too educated on labour law here. doesn’t work though, more and more foreign workers are learning their rights, and rightly so. Yea so its all starting to balance out. Exploitation does not win.
About 4 years too late
Better late than never though. It’s hard enough trying to run a small business these days. I’m sure many businesses will be grateful for this small helping hand.
So do you suggest scrapping it -
Too late that’s it
I expect that to qualify you must have a tax clearance cert and be up to date with property tax and rates,
Surely anything that’s a help to small and medium businesses is a good thing so well done to the minister on that. However, I would ask the question why a London, rather than Irish, based company was employed to manage the funds?
If that is so Maybe it’s because they gave the best solution at the best price…plenty Irish companies going back and forth to the UK doing the same in other sectors…nothing wrong with it.
In irish hands…. It would vanish….
sME’s need less government interference , not more. Businesses thrive when the dead hand fcuks off. Government grants are like Greeks bearing gifts.
That is only true in times of economic expansion as SME’s can usually avail of easy credit.In a financially illiquid economy like Irelands at the minute grants and financial incentives are very important as they wouldn’t have access to any other funding.Or not alot anyway.
Complete b.s. Only really available to exporters so stuff all use to us locals
@ genius
Unless you have a tax clearance cert etc then you shouldn’t be in business no matter how small
The major problem with schemes like this is that small businesses aren’t informed about it and therefore cannot benefit from them and in turn carry on struggling and going nowhere
This should be the banks role, not government
This is a drop in the water of what’s really required.What about a financial incentive or grant to establish an online presence as alot of irish businesses are reluctant to make the move online.They don’t see it as worthwhile which is incorrect it opens them up to the world market.Maybe some irish business owners are not computer literate which would put them off.
(Sleepy,sleepy ,snoozie,sleepy )can finaly go into production yipeeeeee!!!!!!!
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