As anyone who has kicked off a BES scheme knows there are a few simple steps you have to do in order to qualify. The key one is a “New Company Cert” from Enterprise Ireland or a CEB. To qualify for the cert they generally give you a small employment grant (a Feasibility Study Grant is not sufficient). You can then go to the Revenue and start the actual BES process itself and get in-principal approval for your scheme.

Currently the Revenue will not authorise any new BES scheme until the EU approves the new limits in the last Budget/Finance Bill. This makes sense. The general feeling right now is that approval will happen in September.

For some unfathomable reason, EI will not carry out those first two steps listed above until the EU gives the approval. So we all know what’s going to happen in September - we’ll have two enormous bottlenecks, one in EI and one in the Revenue as everyone races to get their scheme in.

Would it not make far more sense for EI to take the tiny €2k hit now for each of a bunch of start-ups so that September does not turn into a melee? If the EU turns the new scheme down, so what? It does not negate the New Company Cert or the employment grant.

If we had the Cert now, we could do all our RICT paperwork. If it is still possible to get in-principal approval from the Revenue then we could also put the scheme in place, ready to execute, attract some potential investors and then press the GO button in September. If it’s a red light from the EU then we’ve just wasted some time doing paperwork.

Can someone from EI or a CEB address this as a matter of urgency?