Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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884. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine further to Parliamentary Question No. 236 of 15 June, 2022, if the specific European Commission rules or European Union regulations that limit support under the Brexit processing capital support scheme apply to SMEs only. [35472/22]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I was pleased to announce on 12 May a new €45 million Brexit Processing Capital Support Scheme. The scheme delivers on a recommendation of the Seafood Taskforce and offers grant rates of between 30% and 50% for capital investment in SME seafood processing enterprises, varying depending on the degree of value adding in the project.

The scheme is designed to counter the adverse consequences of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. It seeks to support the processing sector to engage in transformational change, mitigating the effects of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and Brexit, while also building more environmentally friendly, sustainable and competitive enterprises which serve the EU and wider global markets, create higher levels of employment more locally, and make better and more sustainable use of Irish landed or imported raw material. The scheme is aimed at supporting industry led transformative capital investments that enable the sector to focus on 'creating more from less' in the wake of reduced supply of raw material and at moving enterprises in the sector further up the supply chain to produce higher value products and shift the industry to a focus on secondary processing and beyond to products targeting end-user markets. The scheme will be proposed for funding under the EU Brexit Adjustment Reserve.

The scheme received State Aid clearance on the basis that it provides supports to SMEs only. This is consistent with the European Commission’s State Aid Guidelines which require consistency with the provisions of the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund Regulation (508/2014), which in turn restricts grant aid to the processing sector to SMEs only. Both article 69 of the EMFF Regulation for the 2014-20 period and article 28 of the new European Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund Regulation (2021/1139) for the 2021-27 period restrict grant supports for capital investment in seafood processing to SMEs. Supports to non-SMEs is permitted only through financial instruments.