Still more to do for Ireland’s SMEs

The outlook for Irish SMEs is improving, but concerns remain, writes Geoff Percival

RECENT utterances from Brussels, that growth prospects for SMEs are improving — with 2013 likely to have marked “a turning point” — may prove not to be the glib, overly-optimistic rhetoric we have come to expect.

In a progress report on the Small Business Act since its inception five years ago, the Commission last month noted the “remarkable resilience of SMEs” (which lost over 600,000 jobs across Europe in 2012 alone and saw their combined contribution to eurozone GDP decline by 1.3%) during the eurozone crisis, saying they proved “significantly more resilient than large enterprises” during the first three years of the crisis; albeit ultimately finding it more difficult to recover when they did hit hard ground.