Stock exchange heralds Irish SMEs

Twenty-one Irish firms have been named among Europe’s top 1,000 high-growth SMEs in a prestigious ranking compiled by the London Stock Exchange.

The report singles out the positive impact of Irish SMEs for particular praise with the 21 named businesses “boasting an impressive average revenue of €57m”.

Irish companies are represented across a wide range of industries including healthcare, agriculture, marketing, and logistics. The greatest representation was to be found in the manufacturing and engineering sectors where six firms made the cut.

London Stock Exchange Group CEO Xavier Rolet said it was the likes of the Irish SMEs that are driving the European economy.

“This research shows high-growth SMEs are the driving force behind the European economy. While the public sector and big blue-chip companies have not been creating jobs for many years now, these companies are growing and employing at an incredible rate. And because by definition these companies are innovators, these jobs tend to be higher skilled and higher paid, helping to give young Europeans the brighter economic future they deserve.

“It is critical that we give these firms access to suitable growth finance that will enable them to invest, grow and become the big job providers of tomorrow,” Mr Rolet said.

Separately, the Dublin Startup Commissioner Niamh Bushnell urged Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor to introduce a “shift in our economic strategy” to better support SMEs looking to scale. Ms Bushnell said she was “struck by how few of these companies are managing to scale globally”.

She also advocated leveraging the country’s huge pool of talent employed by multinationals.

“One approach to filling our knowledge gap is to leverage the hundreds if not thousands of talented people at our FDI based multinationals.

“These people have trained to be leaders and they’ve learned the mechanics, step by step, of building large sales and product management organisations. They know how to conduct international business development. They compete every day with the biggest and win. And they’re right here in Ireland, within arm’s reach,” Ms Bushnell said.

Elsewhere, the IE Domain Registry’s Digital Health Index found one in six Irish SMEs have no online presence. Among those without a website, over 55% said they had no intention of building one in the near future. Some 60% said there was no need to have a website; 35% said that they didn’t have enough time to build one; and 9% said they lacked expertise.