Business Supports
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-13
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Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo

I thank the Deputy for the points he has raised. I assure him that the fund is being designed in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland. We hope it will be operational in 2026. We expect that there will be direct investment in start-ups first. To the Deputy's point, we need to support indigenous Irish SMEs. That will enable Enterprise Ireland, which does tremendous work in the context of co-investing alongside private leads. Enterprise Ireland has a great reputation as being the honest broker in regard to seed and venture capital schemes. We want to sequence this to ensure that SMEs have early deployment and long-term leverage, and that we can give them investment when it is required.
On the size of the equity gap, we estimate that to be in the region of €860 million to €1.3 billion. The State's role is to act as a catalyst as opposed to replacing private markets. We need to support that. The fund will be right-sized within the capital plan.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-13