Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Trading Online Voucher Scheme is funded by my Department and delivered nationwide in partnership with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Enterprise Ireland and the 31 Local Enterprise Offices. The Scheme offers skills training, mentoring and a grant of up to €2,500 to help small and micro-businesses to develop their ecommerce capability. In April the Government provided an additional €3.3m to the scheme bringing the total available in 2020 to €5.6m. In addition, new flexibilities to Scheme were introduced including reducing the requirement for co-funding from 50% to 10% and allowing businesses to apply for a second voucher of up to €2,500 where they have successfully utilised their first one.

There has been a positive response to these changes and significant uptake of the Scheme. In that context my Department is currently reviewing the funding requirements of the Scheme.

Since the initiation of the Scheme small and micro-businesses in the accommodation and food service sector have not been eligible to apply to the Scheme. The rationale for this was that the requirement to physically attend the service meant transactions were likely to take place offline, or the nature of the industry would require them to already be operating in the online space and did not appear to require state intervention. In the light of the Covid-19 pandemic my Department is reviewing this position.