Local Enterprise Office Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown can accept applications for its financial supports from start-up or established businesses that fulfil the following criteria. This criteria applies to Feasibility Grants, Business Priming, Business Expansion & Export Development Grants.

Eligible Businesses Types

• A business located, registered and operating in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County
• A business employing up to 10 employees. Companies employing more than 10 full time employees and less than 50 full time employees that have an international growth ambition who are not yet ready to transition into Enterprise Ireland may be eligible.
• A manufacturing or internationally traded services business
• A domestically traded services business that can demonstrate the potential to export
• The enterprise must be in the commercial sphere
• The enterprise must demonstrate a market for the product/service
• The enterprise must have a capacity for growth and new job creation
• To work out the enterprise eligibility, the LEO will have to establish whether the applicant enterprise is autonomous, a partner or linked. The LEO must take account of any relationships the applicant has with other enterprises. Depending on the category in which the applicant enterprise fits, the LEO may need to add some, or all, of the headcount data from those enterprises to the applicant. Please see the User guide to the SME definition - Publications Office of the EU (europa.eu) for further guidance.

Additionally, we require that:-

• Adequate finance will be available to fund the project including its operating costs
• The promoters possess sufficient management and technical capacity to implement the proposed project
• The project complies with existing policies and permits, licences and authorisations required under any statute regulation or order having the force of law
  
  

Ineligible Businesses & Projects

• Retail enterprises, personal services, professional services (including consultancies), generic services or construction and local building services are not eligible for grant aid
• Areas of enterprise which involve displacement of existing jobs or business: Builders, Hairdressers, Cafés, Pubs, Hotels, General Printers, Construction, Trades etc., would come within this category. Generally, where there are a large number of operators within a sector, the Local Enterprise Office has to have a regard to the implications of grant aiding one or some, possibly putting the others at a competitive disadvantage
• Conferences and Seminars
• Projects which are contrary to public policy
• Duplication of support for projects which would be eligible for assistance from other State Agencies or EU funded Operational Programmes
• Existing Firms which already have an established relationship with Enterprise Ireland or IDA.  Please do not apply to the Local Enterprise Office if you have an existing application for the same project under consideration by Enterprise Ireland
• Projects involving primary agricultural production
• Projects with employees in excess of 10 people. Companies employing more than 10 full time employees and less than 50 full time employees that have an international growth ambition who are not yet ready to transition into Enterprise Ireland may be eligible.
• Mobile assets, i.e. cars, motor vans, laptops, mobile machinery etc.
• Where specific potential for job displacement exists (i.e. where a new business could only prosper by diverting sales, output, or employment away an existing local business(es) already providing essentially the same offering, thus placing existing jobs and the viability of the existing business(es) at risk);
• Projects deemed to be capable of proceeding in any event without LEO assistance i.e. deadweight
• Projects essentially comprising importation and distribution
• Own Labour Research costs