Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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161. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the financial supports currently being made available to small businesses; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43867/24]

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) play an extremely important role at local level, as part of a supportive ecosystem, providing their services direct to small businesses and promoting entrepreneurship within towns and communities across the country.

LEOs are the first stop shop for every business in the country and provide a signposting service for all government supports available to the SME sector and can provide information/referrals to other relevant bodies under agreed protocols.

Every day, LEOs help small businesses through training, mentoring, digital and green supports as well as providing priming, feasibility and expansion grants to manufacturing and internationally traded services businesses. LEOs all over the country will continue to help new businesses start up and promote a culture of entrepreneurship.

We have made a number of improvements to the digital, lean and green supports that are available through the LEOs to small businesses. We have opened up the eligibility criteria of schemes and programmes to ensure that support is made available to as many small businesses as possible.

Both the Energy Efficiency Grant and the Grow Digital Voucher have been made available to small businesses with up to 50 employees across all sectors and the eligible expenditure of each of these supports has been broadened to provide a greater variety of support to help small businesses to meet the challenges of the twin transition to decarbonise and digitalise.

The Energy Efficiency Grant can fund practical measures to help a business reduce their long-term energy costs including upgrading to LED lighting, replacing heat pumps, and upgrading refrigeration units, ovens and dishwashers and is worth up to €10,000.

The Grow Digital Voucher provides up to €5,000 in funding towards a wide variety of digital interventions that will support businesses on their digitalisation journey. Eligible expenditure under this scheme includes e-commerce software, e-invoicing software, cyber security software, as well as analytics software including Artificial Intelligence systems.

I also announced the Power Up Grant as part of Budget 2025 to assist businesses in the hospitality and retail sectors that continue to face higher costs, particularly in relation to energy. This grant builds on from the success of the Increased Cost of Business (ICOB) Scheme and is designed to provide a direct financial boost to our small and medium enterprises in the retail and hospitality sectors. ICOB has paid out over €244m to 75,000 SMEs, including 38,000 SMEs in the retail and hospitality sector. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Local Authorities in getting these important grants to business owners in their county.

The Power Up Grant has a budget of €170m which will ensure this is a significant and meaningful intervention for our SMEs. Eligible businesses will receive a grant of €4,000. As with ICOB, the Power Up grant will be administered on behalf of my Department by the Local Authorities.

In July last, I launched the National Enterprise Hub. This is a new all-of-Government service, funded through my Department and operated by Enterprise Ireland. It is staffed by expertly trained advisors and is focused on helping businesses access a range of government supports.

The NEH brings together information and resources on over 230 government supports from 23 different departments and state agencies which can be accessed through the new online hub, you can also contact the team and speak directly to an advisor by phone, email or via live chat.

To date, the National Enterprise Hub has attracted over 58,000 active users to its site and engaged with over 1200 companies. Currently the top supports requests include information on how become more sustainable and support on business expansion.