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Ireland: not so busy after all?

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The surprising answer, after a decade of the Celtic Tiger, was, not very, according to a report in Ireland.

Only one out of every 100 Irish people starts a business, compared with 12 out of every 100 Brazilians. In the U.S., 10 adults per hundred started a business, and eight out of 100 in Australia.

Four out of every 100 Germans, and three Britons started their own companies. Only Japan performed worse than Ireland.

Most surprising was the response of Irish civil servants, development and support agency executives, consultants, financiers and successful entrepreneurs who were asked what they thought the likely outcome of the survey would be.

Most assumed that Ireland would be second only to the U.S. in small business creation.

Mark Fielding, chief executive of ISME, told reporters: “The state’s development agencies are failing my members miserably. Since June I’ve held 15 briefings around the country with SMEs and each time, on a show of hands on how many had been assisted by the agencies, there have been almost no hands.”

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“Smaller companies with fewer than 10 employees which want to expand and take on four or five new employees get bamboozled by Enterprise Ireland and the bureaucratic complexity of looking for support,” he said.

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