Ensuring Irish startups remain Irish-owned is a 'challenge'

Startup Ireland is a new initiative announced in budget 2027 last week

Executive director at Enterprise Ireland Kevin Sherry said: 'We are focused on trying to ensure that the alternatives to actually deciding to sell or not sell are more evident.' File picture: Maxwell’s

Ensuring startups retain Irish ownership is a “challenge” but creating a more competitive ecosystem for startups, making it easier to scale, and “writing larger cheques”, the more likely they're going to stay majority owned Irish, the head of the new initiative Startup Ireland has said.

Startup Ireland is a new initiative announced in the budget last week.

Its goals through to 2030 include supporting 1,000 new startups, ensuring 35% of supported startups are female-led, increasing the number of startups reaching €1m turnover by 20%, and strengthening Ireland’s position as a globally connected innovation hub.

On Tuesday, Enterprise Ireland launched the first major Startup Ireland initiatives. The Startup Ireland National Accelerator Programme includes a funded National Company Accelerator with a €100k investment for participants to accelerate their growth and international scaling.

The Startup Ireland AI Accelerator will bring together numerous companies working on the technology. The selected companies will benefit from 12 weeks of access to technical expertise, customers and investors to help them develop and scale internationally.

There will also be a new Startup Ireland Strategic Advisory Forum that will bring entrepreneurs, investors, government representatives and ecosystem stakeholders together to inform future policy and programmes.

According to Enterprise Ireland, Startup Ireland will bring together Government, agencies, investors, universities, industry and the wider startup community to help make it easier for founders to start, scale and succeed from Ireland.

Head of Startup Ireland at Enterprise Ireland Conor O’Donovan, said “Irish indigenous companies are the lifeblood of our economy and will be central to Ireland’s future stability, resilience and growth”.

“We have the talent, ambition and track record to build the next generation of globally competitive Irish companies, but founders need the right conditions to move faster from idea to market, and from early-stage business to international growth.

“Founders have consistently told us that ambition alone is not enough. They need early access to capital, experienced mentors, specialist expertise, and stronger connections to international markets and investors,” he said.

Startup Ireland is designed to respond to those needs. 

When asked how the initiative will go about incentivising new startups to stay in Irish ownership, and scale here, rather than taking a potential buy-out offer from one of the larger multinational tech firms, Mr O’Donovan said it is a “challenge”.

“Our ambition is the more competitive we can make the ecosystem here, the more likely they're going to stay majority owned Irish,” he said.

“A big intent behind this program is to make it as easy as possible for them to scale outside of Ireland, but retain that ownership in Ireland. Between the programs and the funding we're also writing larger cheques. 

"We've made a number of adjustments ourselves in terms of our funding. Our co-investment has been made more flexible for certain categories.” 

Executive director at Enterprise Ireland Kevin Sherry added that they are “not expecting or trying to prevent acquisitions taking place”.

“That's a very important part of a lively ecosystem, but we are focused on trying to ensure that the alternatives to actually deciding to sell or not sell are more evident.”