Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent)
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346. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for an overview of grants awarded to hospitality businesses from 2019 to 2024, by region, by grant scheme name and total funding allocated per year; the overall operational status of businesses that received funding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9573/25]

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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My Department facilitates the creation of high quality, sustainable enterprises, and employment in all sectors (including the hospitality sector) across Ireland.

To achieve this, my Department and its Agencies provide a range of enterprise supports to businesses.

The Local Enterprise Offices provide direct grant assistance to a wide range of small businesses. However, I understand that the Grant Management Information System used by the Local Authorities to administer grants is not currently equipped to provide sectoral data on the uptake of supports.

In the last year, my Department ran the Increase Cost of Business (ICOB) Scheme and the Power Up grant. The second phase of the ICOB scheme, and the Power Up grant, were targeted at businesses operating in the retail and hospitality sectors.

In total, these grant schemes paid out over €400m, to support SMEs throughout the country.

The second phase of ICOB gave out €90m to almost 42,000 retail and hospitality businesses, on top of the €90m these businesses received as part of the first phase of ICOB, and the Power Up grant gave out €158m to over 39,000 retail and hospitality businesses.

In total, these schemes represent a total of €338m in supports to businesses in the retail and hospitality sector in 2024 alone. The criteria for ICOB and Power Up stated that businesses must intend to continue trading for at least three months from the submission date.

Hospitality businesses may have been eligible to apply for the following schemes that Fáilte Ireland ran in response to COVID19 (if they also provided eligible tourism services):

• The COVID-19 Adaptation Fund that contributed to the costs of implementing Fáilte Ireland’s Guidelines for Re-Opening.
• The Restart Plus Grant for B&Bs that assisted owners with the costs of re-starting and operating their B&B business (which did not pay local authority rates) at the appropriate time. Minimum grants of €4,000 were available.
• Tourism Business Continuity Schemes 2021 and 2022 that were programmes of funding designed to support strategic tourism businesses survive through the pandemic and be there to help drive the recovery of tourism.
• The Outdoor Dining Enhancement Investment Scheme, which was run in partnership with Local Authorities, and worked to facilitate greater capacity in outdoor dining by supporting Local Authorities and hospitality businesses with upgrading and enhancing streets and public spaced and implementing weather-proofing solutions which will facilitate year-round outdoor dining.