Enterprise Support Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo

As set out in our Department's sectoral capital plan, I and my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Burke, published last week, ensuring a vibrant seed and venture capital market that supports high growth and market disruptive businesses at all stages of development from seed to follow-on is a key priority for this Government. The seed and venture capital scheme was established in 1994 and since then has invested €700 million to support and sustain national and regional innovation which, in turn, has leveraged €3.3 billion in private investment.
The scheme's key purpose is to increase the supply of risk capital to Irish SME start-ups and scale-ups, to support their growth, leverage private sector investment and establish a robust, commercially viable and sustainable venture capital sector in Ireland. By providing access to finance at the critical start-up phase, the scheme has also played a very important role in developing the pipeline of talent, innovation and high-growth Irish-owned companies. It is funded through our Department and administered by Enterprise Ireland.
The scheme operates by making commitments to selected venture capital funds which, in turn, make investments into high potential, innovative companies, according to their investment strategies. The funds are selected to align with national objectives and Enterprise Ireland's strategy. The fund managers participating in the scheme look for the best of Irish innovation, namely, companies that can compete on the global stage and which typically require significant equity investment to develop their products and services.
The scheme operates in five-year cycles. The Minister, Deputy Burke, launched the latest cycle of the scheme in August 2024 which will run for the period 2025 to 2029. The Government agreed to an increase of €75 million on the previous cycle. That brings the total available to invest under the 2025 scheme to a record allocation of €250 million.
The first open call for the current scheme closed in February 2025 and received a record number of applications, demonstrating that there is a high level of demand for finance to invest in Irish start-ups. Enterprise Ireland made its first commitments to the fund in quarter 4 of 2025. This will be followed by a period of further fundraising by the funds.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13