Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Central Statistics Office, CSO, has responsibility for collating information on the number of enterprises that close each year as part of its work in developing and maintaining the CSO's central business register, CBR. The CBR is developed using data provided by the Companies Registration Office, CRO, and the Revenue Commissioners. The most recent data available on enterprise closures from the central business register, published as part of Business in Ireland - Insights on the Lifecycle of Businesses 2022, is for 2021, for preliminary enterprise closures.

This is due to the CSO's approach whereby an enterprise is recorded as having ceased trading where no tax returns have been filed for two successive years, with one year of no returns being recorded. There are a lot of complicated details on the number of SMEs involved. The number of SMEs that closed in 2017 was 687. In 2018, it was 718. The preliminary figure for SME closures in 2021 is 740. I will come back with more detail after the question.

See this speech in context