Over €8.6 million has been allocated to Kilkenny businesses so far under the restart grant scheme.
It comes as today’s meeting (Monday) of the local authority heard that more entrepreuners are now entitled to the funding than was first believed.
Confusion over the closing date for applications means that €800,000 is now to be paid out to those who wrongly missed out on the first round of the grant.
The council’s Head of Finance Martin Prendiville says the complication was caused by the introduction of the later Restart Plus scheme:
“The initial grant scheme was due to close at the end of August, but then the Government announced that scheme was being closed early because the restart plus scheme was announced” he explained to KCLR News.
“However a number of businesses hadn’t appplied for the initial grant scheme because they weren’t sure when they were going to reopen themselves. So they obviously then weren’t able to apply for the grant, but the Government and the dept of enterprise have now decided that they are eligible for that grant, so we will be processing those applications and those appeals over the next few weeks. We expect there will be up to €800,000 to be paid out under that scheme” he predicted.
Martin also encouraged local business owners who believe they have grounds for an appeal to get in touch; “They can log on to our website, there’s an email address there, so if they could just send us an email to [email protected] and we’ll take it from there. We just ask that they provide their contact details and as much information as they can in that email, and we will get back to them very promptly.”
