Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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205. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of businesses that availed of the trading online vouchers scheme in 2018 and to date in 2019; the budget provided for the scheme in 2018 and 2019; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27001/19]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Trading Online Voucher Scheme is specifically designed to support small and micro enterprises to trade online. The scheme offers financial assistance of up to €2,500, subject to matching funding, coupled with training, mentoring and networking supports to help small businesses to develop their online trading capability. Small businesses, with 10 or fewer employees and less than €2m in revenue, that have little or no capacity to trade online, are eligible to apply.

The Trading Online Voucher Scheme is funded by my Department and delivered on a nationwide basis by Enterprise Ireland, through the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) network. Businesses must be located within the jurisdiction of the LEO to which they apply.

The following table below outlines the voucher approvals and overall budget for the Scheme in the 2018/2019 period.

*2018 Expenditure for the Scheme

In addition to the financial assistance element of the Scheme, in the 2018/2019 period over 5,000 businesses have received training provided by the LEOs under the Scheme, bringing the total businesses trained to over 16,000 since its launch in 2014.