New Government Supports to help businesses as they plan to reopen
On Saturday 2nd May the Government announced a suite of new supports to assist businesses as the plan to reopen the economy takes effect.
These measures are in addition to those already announced previously by the different Government departments.
The new measures include:
- a restart grant, which will take the form of a waiver/rebate of commercial rates of up to €10k from 2019, for micro and small businesses. It is envisaged that businesses would use this grant to upgrade their premises to meet social distancing requirements
- a three-month commercial rates waiver for impacted businesses forced to shut during the lockdown
- the ‘warehousing’ of tax liabilities for a period of twelve months after recommencement of trading during which time there will be no debt enforcement action taken by Revenue. More details on this can be found here
- a €2 billion Pandemic Stabilisation and Recovery Fund within the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), which will make capital available to medium and large enterprises through State investment in the company.
- a €2 billion COVID-19 Credit Guarantee Scheme to support lending to SMEs for terms ranging from 3 months to 6 years, which will be below market interest rates
It should be noted that the COVID-19 Credit Guarantee Scheme plus the Pandemic Stabilisation and Recovery Fund require new legislation to be passed in order to take effect so these supports will, in all likelihood, be delayed until a new Government is formed.
Published 05/05/2020
Last updated: 18th May 2020