Jobs boost announced by Local Enterprise Office Fingal
Small businesses continue to be the main driver of economic growth in Ireland, according to the Local Enterprise Office Fingal. And much of the jobs growth is coming from small businesses that are exporting.
Twenty six (26) Fingal small businesses and start-ups approved for financial supports this month by the Fingal Local Enterprise Office are poised to create permanent new jobs. New positions are being created immediately and it is expected that over the next 12 months more than 50+ new jobs will result from the LEO funding.
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Announcing the latest LEO investment of almost €160,000 in small businesses, Fingal LEO stated that 2016 has seen significant growth in employment in the small business sector.
The twenty six local businesses were approved for business priming grants, business expansion grants, business innovation grants, export voucher and E-commerce grants. 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 twenty six businesses at a specially convened awards event in County Hall.
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”.
Included in this “crop” of exciting businesses are three food and drink start-ups, including a business that drops ready to cook healthy foods with cooking instructions to the door, a Rustic Smoked Fish Pâté producer and a powdered milk producer. In addition the Local Enterprise office approved funding for new jobs in a delivery business that operates on a crowd source format similar to that of Hailo and also a company that creates Global Tracking software designed to assist global corporates track the impacts of their business travellers.
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 twenty six grant approved businesses, Paul Reid, Chief Executive of Fingal County Council said: “In 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 acceleration in actual job creation and investment among small businesses in Fingal”.
Reid continued: “By the end of this year 2016 we will have provided one to one business support services to over 900 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. The Trading Online Vouchers grant is part of the National Digital strategy aimed at supporting Irish small businesses while they enhance their online presence.
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