Noel McCarthy (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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391. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the reason privately owned post offices are ineligible to receive his Department’s increased cost of business and Power Up grants; if he has any plans to make changes in this regard; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3106/25]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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In order to get payments to businesses before the end of 2024, the Power Up grant was aligned with the ICOB scheme and a business must have received the second ICOB grant and be in the hospitality, retail and beauty sectors in order to receive the Power Up grant. If a business was not in those sectors they were not eligible for the Power Up grant.

The reason for payments to those specific sectors is due to the greater impact that increased costs are having on the hospitality and retail and beauty sectors (As noted in the DETE-DSP joint working paper titled “An assessment of the cumulative impact of proposed measures to improve working conditions in Ireland”).

The Department used NACE codes to determine eligibility for those sectors. The NACE Coder is a European classification system that assigns organisations according to their business activities. These Codes are the only method for officials to define sectors and these were used for the ICOB second payment determinations. Post Offices are not eligible for the second payment as their primary business is not in the retail or hospitality or beauty sector, as per the NACE Codes used to define business categories.

The Department has no plans to reopen the scheme as the scheme closed to registrations in 2024.