Investors may have to give back €25m under flawed SME incentive

As much as €25m may need to be taken back from investors in SMEs after parts of a jobs incentive scheme over the last three years was discovered to fall foul of EU State aid rules.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said he took the advice of the attorney general and had rushed to amend the Employment and Investment Incentive scheme in the latest Finance Bill.

The Department of Finance said it had “held our hands up” and acted quickly when told by Revenue of the error and had informed the European Commission of the error a week ago.