64 new jobs to be created with €262K in Grants to Fingal Businesses

64 new jobs to be created with €262K in Grants to Fingal Businesses

Sixteen Fingal businesses approved for financial supports from the Local Enterprise Office Fingal will create twenty two new jobs immediately, growing to sixty four within the next twelve months.

Sixty-four new jobs and over €262,500 in financial supports have been announced for Sixteen Fingal start-ups and growing small businesses, in the latest announcement of job-creation grants by the Fingal Local Enterprise Office (LEO) this week.

The sixteen local businesses were approved for business priming grants, business expansion grants and innovation grants by the Evaluation Committee of the Fingal Local Enterprise Office this month. The Mayor of Fingal Cllr. Darragh Butler and the Chief Executive of Fingal County Council Paul Reid presented grant approval letters to each of the 16 businesses at a specially convened awards event in County Hall today, 5^th July.

Mayor Darragh Butler, who himself served for several years previously on the Fingal County Enterprise Board is very familiar with the importance of supporting start-ups, commenting:

“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”.

Oisín Geoghegan, Head of Enterprise with Fingal County Council, confirmed that the small businesses approved for funding are creating at least twenty two new jobs immediately, a figure that will increase to sixty four new jobs within the next 12 months. This LEO investment is worth €262,500, bringing the total approved this year to €490,000.

Announcing the latest series of grant approvals for the Fingal Businesses, 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.”

The sixteen start-up companies (located in Swords, Balbriggan, Howth Junction, Portmarnock, The Ward, Castleknock, Blanchardstown, Skerries, The Naul, Malahide and Lusk) were approved for Business Priming and Business Expansion Grants. Included in this “crop” of exciting businesses are six food and drink start-ups, including Fingal’s first substantial Craft Beer brewery, a ready to cook vegetable meal producer and a ready to go healthy breakfast producer. In addition the Local Enterprise office approved funding for new jobs in international corporate tourism, an export-oriented craft producer, a cloud based business intelligence company specialising in hospital services, an engineering company producing solutions for food production, a ceramics manufacturer, a precision engineering company, a chemical product provider, and an Android tablet developer creating products for the over 65’s.

Presenting letters of offer to each of the 16 grant approved businesses, Paul Reid, Chief Executive of Fingal County Council said: “In the first two quarters of 2016 we have seen increasingly strong demand for services provided by our Local Enterprise Office. On the back of continued improvement in our economy, the Local Enterprise Office has reported an acceleration in actual job creation and investment among small businesses in Fingal”.

Reid continued: “In the first six months of 2016 we have provided one to one business support services to more than 500 businesses and would-be entrepreneurs, not to mention the many hundreds of others that have availed of all of the wide variety of business support programmes, financial assistance and management development training programmes that the Fingal Local Enterprise Office has organised. All of this is having a profoundly positive impact on our local economy and continued growth.”

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.

Click Here to view photos from the Presentation

List of businesses approved for funding: