As Minister Noonan noted in his speech today, "Budget 2015 is about securing the recovery, building for the future and broadening it to families across the country." Key to this recovery are small businesses and jobseekers - so what is in Budget 2015 for these two key groups of Irish society?
Here's a quick summary:
For small and medium businesses
Budget 2015 reinforced the Government’s commitment to the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector through supports in the areas of financing, exporting and through sector specific initiatives.
In terms of financing:
- The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, which is expected to be formally launched at the end of this month, will increase the availability of loans of longer duration coupled with more flexible conditions and potentially at lower cost.
- The Credit Review process is being further improved with Permanent TSB agreement to participate and Ulster Bank actively considering participation.
- Changes to the Seed Capital scheme will be re-launched in the coming months.
In terms of exporting the Government will:
- Roll out an integrated Export Strategy in 2015 with financing products and platforms being developed by the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
- Make improvements to the Foreign Earnings Deduction by: extending the list of countries eligible; reducing the number of days that employees are required to be abroad in a year to 40 days; and including travel time in order to make it easier for smaller companies to send employees on trade missions.
In terms of supporting specific sectors, Budget 2015 introduced a number of tax measures to support farming, maximising available agricultural land with measures to encourage long term leasing and tackling income volatility with enhancements to income averaging scheme.
SMEs in the tourism sector are supported through the retention of the 9% VAT rate. This initiative has been a great success with an extra 23,000 employed in the sector since mid-2011.
SMEs are further supported through changes to the Employment and Investment Incentive Schemes, increasing the amount of finance that can be raised by a company to €5m annually subject to a lifetime maximum of €15m and broadening the scheme investment areas.
In addition, the Government is increasing the required holding period for shares from 3 to 4 years and extending the inclusion of hotels, guest houses and self-catering accommodation in the scheme by a further 3 years.
Minister Brendan Howlin and Minister Michael Noonan attend Budget 2015 press conference
For Jobseekers
Getting people back to work remains this Government’s number one priority. The employment support measures we have introduced to date are paying dividends. Unemployment is falling faster than almost everywhere else in the EU, and an additional 48,000 jobs are forecast by end 2015.
Building on this momentum, Budget 2015 continues the Government's commitment to getting people back to work. Key supports include:
- €1.6bn to Pathways to Work providing almost 300,000 work and training places, helping people acquire the skills necessary to compete for the jobs that are being created
- €12 million for the JobPath initiative in 2015, which will match the long-term unemployed with appropriate training and employment opportunities
- A doubling of the number of positions to 6,000 for the long-term unemployed on the Government’s wage subsidy scheme, JobsPlus.
In addition, a new Back to Work Family Dividend will be introduced. This will allow families to retain the full Qualified Child increase of €29.80 per week per child for 12 months after their return to work and 50% of the payment in the second year.
To ensure that the benefits of recovery are felt by all workers, the Government has committed to the establishment of the Low Pay Commission in 2015.
To read more about Budget 2015, check out these factsheets from Department of Finance.
You can read the full Budget 2015 materials here.