Lessons from the month of September

So here’s where the news was hiding! September provided a number of appropriately juicy news stories. Join us in reflecting on the month that was and sharing what we’ve learned.

1. “Through brave and driven execution, Irish companies can be global leaders, they can be the best in the world.”

Fitzgerald Power attended Scale Ireland’s Autumn gathering in September, which proved the stakes are high for Ireland’s entrepreneurs. The good news is that there’s possibly never been a better time to start a business! That said, funding remains a significant barrier to growth.

With just weeks to go before Budget ‘24 is announced, Minister for Finance Michael McGrath, TD, has revealed that a simplification of Ireland’s taxation system is top of the agenda to help businesses access supports such as the R&D credit scheme more seamlessly. According to a recent report on the state of R&D by the Industry Research and Development Group and KPMG, Ireland needs to increase funding by at least €2bn to catch up with other innovation-leading countries.

That said, one of the greatest challenges businesses face when trying to access the popular R&D tax credit scheme is the prevalence of “red-tapeism and bureaucracy”, according to McGrath. “[Accessing the scheme] has proven to be really difficult and unnecessarily cumbersome,” he said at the Scale Ireland event. “I have been engaging with the revenue commissioners and with my own team to ensure that simplification of our taxation system is a theme of the budget and that we put in place a process that we’ve learned from the feedback that we have received, and we try to make practical changes that enable greater accessibility with the various schemes that are there.”

FYI, the complexity in accessing the R&D tax credit scheme was one of the major issues raised by founders at last year’s event, ahead of Budget 2023.

2. A big player in the Irish construction industry is being pursued by Revenue.

The Revenue Commissioner found itself in the unusual situation of being an unsecured creditor this month, as MAC Interiors Limited, a company which specialises in office fit-outs, was granted the court’s protection from its creditors, while Kieran Wallace, of Interpath Advisory, was appointed as the firm’s examiner.

Mac Interiors Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mac Group Holdings, a Northern Irish company ultimately controlled by Armagh businessman Paul McKenna, who founded the business in 2002. The Group employs more than 200 people across four offices in Ireland and the UK and has worked with some of the best-known companies in the world, including Microsoft, Paypal, Mastercard and Unilever.  Mac (Management and Construction) started life as an office fit-out company but over time made its move to general contracting.

Lawyers representing Wallace asked Justice Michael Quinn to formally approve the scheme, which would allow the firm to exit examinership and continue as a going concern. However, Revenue, which the court heard is owed over €13m in ‘warehoused’ taxes has opposed the application on legal grounds. It claims that certain creditors were not correctly classified in the examiner’s proposed scheme. The hearing continues in October.

3. Sustainability Loan Schemes are a-go.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney, along with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, and Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, have this month announced Bank of Ireland as the first lender to the market for the €500 million Growth and Sustainability Loan Scheme.

The scheme will provide eligible SMEs, including farmers, fishers, and Small Mid-Caps with competitively priced loans of between €25,000 and €3 million for terms of up to ten years, with loans of up to €500,000 available unsecured, when investing in the growth and resilience of their business, and/or contribute to climate action and environmental sustainability.

Also, Tirlán, formerly Glanbia, has launched the Tirlán Nurture Fund investment platform, with a focus on nutrition and sustainability. The platform will identify and scale up early-stage agri-food tech startups through the €10m investment, with a particular focus on improving sustainability goals and nutritional output for Tirlán and its farming partners.

The co-op said that it intends to make both direct and indirect investments into ‘proven technologies’ that are attempting to scale commercially or expand into new markets.

4. Glass ceilings continue to shatter.

The number of women in C-suite and management positions is gradually increasing, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). In 2023, one in four members of boards of directors in Ireland were female, up from almost 22% in 2021, while female chairpersons rose by nearly 5% to 19% in the same time period. (Something we spoke about with the former CEO of Phelan Energy Group, former Global Vice President of PayPal and former Senior Manager at GE Money Louise Phelan this month.)

Female CEOs accounted for 19% in 2023, a 6% rise from 2021, but the number of female CFOs has dropped slightly by almost 4% in 2019 and 2.5% in 2021 to 25%. In 2023, foreign-owned enterprises had a slightly higher percentage of female directors than Irish-owned enterprises, as 25% of directors were female in foreign-owned and 24% were female in Irish-owned.

The financial and insurance sector had the highest percentage of female representation at board level at 31%, followed by ICT and administrative and support service activities, at 30% and 30.0% respectively.

5. Dogpatch has officially chosen people over ideas.

Dogpatch Labs has pivoted focus from business ideas to talent with their latest Founders programme, which saw 42 people involved in an experiment that kicked off this September.

Funded by returns from the Dublin-based start-up hub’s successful business investments, the 42 individuals have been paired up to start developing ideas with the support of mentors such as Manna founder Bobby Healy, entrepreneur and broadcaster Áine Kerr and the University of Limerick’s Prof Stephen Kinsella, co-director of the university’s Immersive Software Engineering programme. To ensure they can devote themselves fully to the accelerator, the participants will receive a monthly stipend of €2,000.

Ideas generated and shaped in this first phase will then be developed in phase two. It’s a short track to the finish in December, which will see Dogpatch host a pitch event that will offer the chance to secure €100,000 investment.

6. Is right-wing media in crisis?

Presenter, comedian and conspirator Russell Brand has been taken down a peg following a lengthy investigation by The Times UK and Channel 4. The investigation centres around Brand’s relationship with four different women, each of whom claims to have either been raped, sexually abused or emotionally abused by Brand at some point over the past two decades. One of the women claims she was underage at the time.

It follows a fascinating time in modern media, where maligned comics like Brand have been given opportunities to gain traction by way of conspiracy videos uploaded to subscription sites like YouTube or TikTok. Brand, whose foul-mouthed humour and sexually aggressive jokes have caused outrage in the past, has excelled on these platforms and continues to do so despite allegations.

That said, with fellow right-wing Laurence Fox having a bit of a ‘mare at the minute – not since he made racist remarks and was dropped by his agent were things so bad! For those who are unfamiliar with his work, he very recently attacked a female journalist on GB News, calling her a “little woman,” and, awkwardly, unshaggable – the gauntlet may be thrown for some sort of shakeup in modern media. Not that anyone should hold their breath.

In summary: Bit of a weird one for the minute, isn’t it? Though lots of good news is undoubtedly happening – Ireland at the Rugby World Cup, for one – it can sometimes seem a little overshadowed by the bad at times.

UK media is undoubtedly in the middle of what feels like a balancing act, which is nice for us given that the RTÉ chaos took over the news for just about the whole summer. And hey, they might soon have Ryan Tubridy on their airwaves, so who’s to say what will happen next?!

For now, we think it might be best to bask in the reflection of the strength shown both by the women at the centre of the Russell Brand case, as well as Ava Evans, the journalist with whom Laurence Fox seems miserably obsessed. And may we suggest getting a hobby to one and all.

See you next month!

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