merrion street

The European Investment Fund and the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland have tripled their finance for Irish SMEs under the COSME programme in Ireland with a new increase to €330 million.

Today’s deal means that from 2018, in total, an expected 10,000 companies in all sectors across Ireland will have access to COSME support. The additional €230 million was agreed to meet the demand for new financing requests from Irish companies, after 3,500 SMEs primarily in the agri-sector, fully utilised the EUR 100 million financing supported by the COSME EFSI counter-guarantee agreement signed last year. The loans backed by the European Commission’s COSME programme allowed SBCI to launch a new 3 year risk-sharing product last year which was fully utilised within 6 months.

Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said:

I welcome this announcement and I look forward to working with the EIB Group on further significant supports for Irish businesses. In addition to the Brexit Loan Scheme which I recently announced, I am also working with the EIB and the SBCI on the development of a Brexit Investment Loan Guarantee Scheme.