Small Business Column: Time for Irish SMEs to take advantage

In this week’s Small Business column Kehlan Kirwan argues that there is government money on offer through grants and tenders and it’s high time for Irish SMEs to start ‘milking the system’.    

Two happenings in the past two weeks have been interesting ones on behalf of the Government. Firstly, the launch of actionplanforjobs.ie where SMEs can go to find local government supports specific to their area. The second has been the Strategic Banking Corporation scheme which aims to give low-interest loans to the SME market.

Forget that that is what micro-finance Ireland does already or that the problem with SMEs getting loans from the system stemmed from the pillar banks BoI and AIB, which is where you’ll get access to these funds. It did however raise an interesting point, how often do SMEs really milk the system?