Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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51. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of companies that have availed of the Key Employee Engagement Programme each year since its introduction, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34972/25]

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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52. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of corresponding employees who benefited from the Key Employee Engagement Programme (KEEP) each year since its introduction, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34973/25]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 51 and 52 together.

The Key Employee Engagement Programme (KEEP) was introduced by Finance Act 2017 and commenced on 1 January 2018, via section 128F of the Taxes Consolidation Act (“TCA”) 1997. The aim of the scheme is to support SMEs in Ireland in competing with larger enterprises to recruit and retain key employees, by way of a targeted share option programme. KEEP is a notified State aid scheme; in addition there are a number of qualifying conditions to be met. Where the provisions of section 128F TCA 1997 are met, an exemption from income tax, USC and PRSI applies to a qualifying employee on any gain realised on the exercise of a qualifying share option.

Section 128F imposes an obligation on every qualifying company to file a return with Revenue for any year in which it grants an option to an employee, or any year in which an option is exercised, transferred, or released. This return is known as the KEEP1 and must be filed on or before 31 March in the following year.

The table below represents the number of companies who filed a KEEP1 return for each year since the introduction of the KEEP scheme. As outlined, a company is obliged to file a return for each year in which it grants an option to an employee, and each year in which an option is exercised, transferred, or released. As result a company may be included in one or more tax years below.

The table below also shows the number of employees who exercised a share option and availed of the tax relief afforded by the KEEP scheme in each corresponding year. The number of employees who exercised a share option is as returned by the relevant company in the annual KEEP 1 return.

This data represents a point in time position based on the information available to Revenue. It should be noted that these figures may be subject to review and updated at a later date. Please note that due to Revenue’s responsibility to protect taxpayer confidentiality, and Statistical Disclosure Closures (“SDC”) rules, Revenue does not provide data points on groupings of taxpayers (individuals or companies) where the number of taxpayers in that grouping is less than 10. In addition, as there was no opportunity for employees to exercise share options in the 2018 tax year, a non-applicable (N/A) value is applied in the table below.