Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 5, 17, 20 to 22, inclusive, 25, 26, 32 and 38 together.

To give a direct answer on Clare, we think that 3,955 businesses will potentially benefit. I will now answer the question more broadly because other Deputies have questions in this regard.

The increased cost of business grant, announced in budget 2024, is intended to benefit particularly small and medium sized businesses operating from a rateable premises. The grant is intended to aid firms that have been affected by rising costs but is not intended to compensate directly for all increases in wages or other costs for every business. The total allocation for the grant is €257 million.

Officials within my Department are leading the introduction of this scheme, working in conjunction with the local authorities, the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, the County and City Management Association, CCMA, and the Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage. A service level agreement is currently being drafted between my Department and the local authorities to underpin the operation of the scheme. This SLA will cover the delivery, funding and oversight arrangements for the grant scheme.

The administration of the grant will be carried out by local authorities with a view to providing relief in the first quarter of this year. Businesses will be contacted directly by their local authority. The grant has been set up in this way to ensure that the scheme is accessible to smaller businesses, which may have had difficulties availing of previous schemes because of form filling and bureaucracy. There is no intention to limit the scheme in any way related to employee numbers. A business must, at a minimum, meet the following eligibility conditions: it is a commercially trading business operating directly within a premises that is commercially rateable by a local authority; it has provided confirmation of its bank details to the respective local authority; it is rates compliant, including those businesses with a phased payment arrangement in place; and it is tax compliant and in possession of a valid tax registration number.

Data analysis was undertaken by my officials, based on data provided by Tailte Éireann, to estimate the number of potentially eligible businesses. With regard to each local authority, this analysis estimated that up to 3,955 premises in County Clare, 1,909 premises in County Carlow, 5,161 premises in County Tipperary and 4,639 premises in County Kildare could be eligible for the grant, and I can give figures for any county as Deputies wish. However, the final number of qualifying premises may differ as exclusions for vacant premises, non-rates compliant and non-tax compliant businesses are considered.

In relation to further supports for the SME sector, the local enterprise offices provide productivity and competitiveness supports to small businesses to cover lean, green and digital concerns. These include the trading online voucher, green for business and the energy efficiency grant. The “All in a Day's Work” national campaign also emphasises the benefits of these supports for businesses, namely, saving time, energy and money.

In short, what we are hoping is that businesses will get letters by the middle of February, or in and around that timeline. This is a busy time of year for local authorities, particularly their rates offices, but we certainly want to get those letters out. The letters are essentially to confirm with the business that it is still trading and that its bank account details are correct. Then, by the end of the first quarter, we want to have payments going out to businesses right across the country. There are over 140,000 businesses that we think will be eligible for the scheme, so it is a significant job for local authorities to get that funding out.

This is grant aid, not a rates rebate. We have simply calculated the grant on the basis of what businesses paid in rates last year, so any business that paid rates of between €10,000 and €30,000 last year will get a grant of €5,000 under this scheme, and there are about 15,000 businesses in that category. The other businesses paid rates of up to €10,000 and whatever they paid in rates last year, they will get grant aid of 50% of that amount this year, hopefully before the end of the first quarter, through the local authority SLA that we have in place.

See this speech in context