With many businesses struggling with the increase in Cost of living and others booming as they have reached capacity in orders the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke. has announced some significant changes in aids and grants to reduce the costs for small to medium sized businesses.
Here is an extract from the press release:
***** Part of Statement *****
- doubling the Innovation Grant Scheme to €10,000
- increasing the maximum amount available under the Energy Efficiency Grant Scheme to €10,000 and reducing the business contribution rate from 50% to 25%
- widening the eligibility for the Trading Online Voucher, extending it to all sectors up to 50 employees, modernise eligible expenditure and doubling the grant to €5,000
- increasing the lending limit for Microfinance Ireland loans to €50,000 from €25,000
- widening the eligibility for the Digital for Business Consultancy Scheme and extending it to all sectors with up to 50 employees
- launching a new ‘Ireland’s Best Entrepreneur Programme’ to encourage entrepreneurship and startups in under-represented groups
***** Part of Statement *****
The full press release can be viewed here
https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/7a788-government-agrees-measures-to-support-smes/
So what does this mean for our clients:
With many clients wishing to do more online, it means they can now get more done with the grant. At the moment many companies are seeing the grant of 50% or €2,500 for the applicant as the limit to their investment. So they put €5,000 towards the project and this budget hopes to cover
- eCommerce
- Training
- Consultancy
- Paid Adverts
- Online Software
- Booking Systems
- App Development
- etc
As you can see its not actually a lot of money to spend on all of these combined and so we as companies working with clients are often trying to cover all these areas where as someone might say this budget may not cover 1 of these fully, such as App development to mention one.
Does it mean web designer will increase their fee’s?
I would say yes, I can imagine some will just see this news as a chance to increase their fee’s overnight. But I don’t look at it like that at all, I think it will give companies availing of the TOV Grant to get a proper chance of making a success of their business online if they are advised well and pick the right web design or online marketing company to invest in.
We see ourselves as “Digital Partners” with our clients and not just a place to “get a website made”. We work with clients over many years and in some cases its decades of being their secret weapon in digital marketing and making sure they stay ahead of the curve on technology and online trends.
So for us at Cada Media we see this news as being a great step forward for the Trading Online Voucher and the clients we work with year in and year out.
We hope to see the role out of these increases in the coming months with the next budget in Autumn 2024.
If you are interested in working with a company to help design your business for the web, then talk to Dave Jordan on 053 9430748 today
