17 Fingal Businesses to benefit from €169,000 cash injection
The €169,000 cash injection has been awarded by the Local Enterprise Office Fingal through a number of pioneering grant schemes aimed at supporting small businesses.
Seventeen (17) Fingal small businesses and start-ups approved for financial supports this quarter by the Fingal Local Enterprise Office are poised to create permanent new jobs. 14 New positions are being created immediately and it is expected that over the next 12 months more than 30+ new jobs will result from the LEO funding.
Announcing the latest LEO investment of over €169,000 in small businesses, Fingal LEO stated that 2017 has seen significant growth in employment in the small business sector.
The Deputy Mayor of Fingal Cllr. Eithne Loftus and the Chief Executive of Fingal County Council Paul Reid presented grant approval letters to sixteen of the successful businesses at a specially convened awards event in County Hall. The local businesses were approved for business priming grants, feasibility study grants, business expansion grants, and E-commerce grants.
Deputy Mayor Eithne Loftus comment on the importance of supporting start-ups:
“Local business is the lifeblood of our economy and the local authority has a crucial role to ensure that small businesses and start-ups are given every opportunity to succeed. I am delighted that our Local Enterprise Office in Fingal is proactively and successfully encouraging and incentivising entrepreneurship”.
Included in this exciting group of businesses is a premium craft beer producer, an augmented reality Software Business for the telecommunications industry, a creative studio specialising in the creation of web and mobile apps for an international client base. A business that reunites lost property with its owner anywhere in the world and offers a large array of Products and Services to clients throughout Ireland, the UK and Europe and a business that has launched in Ireland and plans to launch in Australia in May 2017, which promises to revolutionize e-commerce delivery in Ireland and the UK using GPS smartphone technology to connect online retailers and local delivery drivers.
Announcing the latest series of grant approvals for the Fingal Businesses, the Head of Enterprise in Fingal, Oisin Geoghegan said: “Financial supports provided by the Fingal Local Enterprise Office can be crucial in helping start-ups to flourish in their first year of operation. This month we have a range of exciting new small businesses that have great potential to create further jobs in Fingal in the coming years. This is just the start of the journey for many of these businesses and I expect they will continue to create new jobs over the coming years.”
Presenting letters of offer to each of the sixteen grant approved businesses, Paul Reid, Chief Executive of Fingal County Council said: “We believe that each of these businesses has the ability to grow and create jobs in Fingal which, in turn, will have a profoundly positive impact on our local economy. Our Local Enterprise Office is playing a significant role in accelerating local job creation and investment among small businesses in Fingal through its many support services. Last year, over 900 businesses and would-be entrepreneurs availed of the wide variety of business support programmes, financial assistance and management development training programmes that the Fingal Local Enterprise Office has organised, many of which were delivered on a one-to-one basis.”
A Business ‘Priming Grant’ is a business start-up grant for qualifying small businesses. The Business ‘Expansion grant’ is designed to assist the business in its growth phase after the initial 18 month start-up period. Feasibility Study Grant assistance is provided to individuals or businesses that wish to develop new products or services or explore international markets. Business Priming and Expansion grants are capped at €80,000 per application, while Feasibility Study grants are €20,000 maximum. The Trading Online Vouchers grant is part of the National Digital strategy