What funding is available for small businesses?

What funding is available for small businesses?

There is a lot of funding available for small business in Ireland

The best resources available are the Local Enterprise Offices (“LEO”) and Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Each county has a LEO which can only help the businesses within that county.

With the LEOs, the following supports are available:

• Help with Brexit (1-2-1 training, customs training, getting Brexit ready)
• Workplace Innovation Toolkits
• LEAN processes
• Covid-19 supports
• Financial Supports (such as Feasibility Study Grant, Priming Grant, Business Expansion Grant, Technical Assistance for Micro Exporters, European Globalisation Fund, New Agile Innovation Fund)
• One Stop Shop (they can refer you to the best resource like Revenue Commissioners, Dept of Social Protection, Education & Training Boards, Skillnets, Credit Review Office, Failte or NACEC)
• Training Programmes (Start Your Own Business Programme, Accelerate Management Development Programme, Food Academy Programme and Digital School of Food)
• Mentoring (business strategy, financial planning, market research, marketing & promotion, production planning, distribution, corporate organisation and website planning and design)
• Trading Online Voucher scheme
• Loans (Microfinance Ireland, SBCI)

There are also a lot of resources available from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, such as the BTWEA or STEA schemes.

The best of course will come be hiring an accountant to source financial support for your sole trade.