Donohoe to make entrepreneur support scheme self-certified

Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Finance, has provided further details of the changes he intends to make to beef up one of the State's flagship entrepreneurial support schemes.

In Budget 2019 speech on Tuesday, the Minister said he planned to make changes to the Employment and Investment Incentive scheme (EIIS) “to increase its efficiency and effectiveness”, but gave no further details.

In a statement on Thursday evening, he said he planned to change the application process for EIIS, and also for the Start-up Refunds for Entrepreneurs (SURE) scheme, to “a largely self-certification model”.

"This will address the most significant problem with the current design of the scheme relating to delays in the application process," said the Department of Finance.

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He will also provide for “a specific investor eligibility regime for investment in very small enterprises”, as well as extend the sunset clause for EIIS and SURE to 2021.

“This is a priority package to address the main shortcomings identified with the scheme. It is intended that other issues will be addressed in a subsequent Finance Bill so as to ensure that the relief is focussed on those enterprises that need it most,” said the department.