Small Business Column: What businesses can expect in the run-up to Budget 2015

The Government is back in session and Kehlan Kirwan looks at what businesses can expect over the next month in the run-up to Budget 2015.

Roll up! Roll up! Roll up! It’s time to start setting ourselves up for the massive Kite Festival running up until mid-October.

We’ll see spectacular kites flying high with attention-grabbing colours and one’s swooping so low you never saw them coming.

It’s an event that Ireland has become used to over the past number of years which requires a deft touch from politicians and code-breaking techniques from the public.

Every year we hope for an honest statement from our government on what people can expect in the next budget.

Every year we’re left questioning till the very last second.

This is the cue for SMEs across the country to wonder what exactly is in store for them after October.

Hiring is put on hiatus, investments put off and Christmas strategies saved as draft proposals. For business owners in some industries it will be panic stations, for others it will bring unexpected positives.

But still we’ll see ourselves wondering what will come around the corner.

However, this budget finds itself being one the most important in the past number of years. Put simply the only thing that matters right now is jobs.

That means employers will be looking at the cost of employment and what they will lose from their bottom line if they choose to hire.

For the past few years this Government has said it has made a commitment to jobs in Ireland.

In part this bares some merit in the fact that they expect unemployment to drop to the 11%-mark by the year’s end, down from the near 15%-mark two years ago. But SMEs around the country still hold the key to future Irish economics.

The Government’s ‘Action Plan For Jobs’ strategy is in effect a document on a shelf. Trotted out every time a ‘major’ jobs announcement makes the headlines. This is where the strategy falls down, because right now in Ireland every job created is major jobs announcement.

Foreign direct investment companies get the headlines because that’s what gets the global headlines.

Domestically the story is different. SMEs around the country who are hiring one or two are just as important as the global conglomerate. A job is a job, no matter where it is.

So we prep ourselves for the inevitable fly-bys of colourful kites.

I, for one, will be looking intently at what will help create jobs in the SME sector in Ireland.

This sector is the most critical to economic success and it’s time the Government developed tangible strategies to match its talk.

For that to happen it needs to think of the single rather than the collective.

There are over 200,000 SMEs in Ireland right now. How do we get them to consider hiring just one?

If Mr Noonan keeps this in mind then maybe we’ll have some unexpected positives.