Digital Transition Fund

As part of Ireland’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Digital Transition Fund will drive transformative digitalisation of enterprise in Ireland, particularly amongst SMEs. The programme will help companies at all stages of their digitalisation journey.

Digital transformation

Embracing digital technologies is crucial for our post pandemic economic recovery. A competitive, innovative and resilient enterprise base is essential to provide high-quality jobs and employment opportunities for people to live and prosper in all regions. Businesses can harness digital technologies in many ways – including to better understand their customers, reduce their costs and improve their products.

The Digital Transition Fund is delivered under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which has been developed by the government so that Ireland can access funding under the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility. Ireland is expected to receive more than €900 million in grants over the lifetime of the Facility.

The Recovery and Resilience Facility is the largest component of NextGenerationEU, the European Union’s response to the global pandemic. The aim is to help repair the immediate economic and social damage brought about by the pandemic and to prepare for a post-Covid Europe that is greener, more digital, more resilient and fit to face the future.

Reasons to digitalise

Digital technologies have the power to transform small businesses, opening up new opportunities that were previously only available to businesses of scale. The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the power of digital in building business resilience. Indeed, there is a substantial risk in companies not engaging with digital – the competitiveness and productivity gap between digitally-enabled firms and businesses with low levels of digital maturity must be addressed.

Digitalisation can deliver:

  • reduced costs and increased productivity
  • better products and services
  • market expansion and diversification
  • greater access to strategic resources
  • greater access to innovation
  • Online Platform Economy
  • Climate Action: Digital technologies can support

Help is available for businesses

Through the Digital Transition Fund, we will increase digitalisation of all businesses across products, processes, supply chains and business models. This will bring about productivity gains, access to new markets, increased innovation and improved competitiveness.

Objectives of the fund

The key objective of the Digital Transition Fund is to drive a step change in the digital transition of Irish business as a key driver of sustainable productivity.

The widespread availability of advanced digital technologies to enterprises of all sizes is causing a wave of innovation in product design and customer services, leading to market disruptions in all sectors as the most innovative enterprises find new ways to create customer value through digital business models. This digital wave will cause many businesses to fall behind the digital innovators and the disruption may have serious impacts on existing business models and could threaten their future survival.

This Fund will be used to help companies at all stages of their digital journey – from going online to digitalisation of products and business operations, to using digital technologies to develop new markets and business models.

Approach

The fund has been designed in the first instance to raise awareness of the value of the digital transition across Irish enterprise.

A new Digital Portal (https://www.growdigital.gov.ie/) has been developed under this fund which will enable companies to assess their digital readiness and will be used to signpost to eco-system supports for digitalisation. The Digital Portal will be used to highlight the opportunities and the enterprise supports available for Digitalisation, including those funded as part of the Digital Transition Fund and others (such as the Grow Digital Voucher and Digital for Business programmes also available from Údarás na Gaeltachta).

The Digital Transition Fund is being used to provide direct grant support to industry. The grant supports available are detailed below.

Grant Funding to Industry

The fund will be used to provide grant aid to eligible companies to assist their digital transition across a range of project types to address different aspects of transition.

The grant supports below are available to client companies of Údarás na Gaeltachta who are currently trading internationally and are engaged in Manufacturing or an Internationally Traded Services industry as defined in ‘S.I. No. 81 of 2010 – INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT (SERVICE INDUSTRIES) ORDER 2010’ and Acht na Gaeltachta 2012. 

Note that additional eligibility criteria, in particular around company size, may apply to individual offers.

Grant Offer Support Available
Digital Discovery: consultancy grant to introduce new digital technologies & solutions. Up to €5,000 grant for 7 days consultancy. Grant rate of up to 80% of eligible costs.
Digital Process Innovation: project grant to implement new lean-digital processes in the business covering production, delivery or organisational methods. Grant rate of up to 50% of eligible costs. Typical maximum support of €150k.
Digital Marketing Capability: training grant to develop in-house digital marketing capability. Grant rate of up to 50% of eligible costs. Typical maximum support of €35k.
Strategic Consultancy: consultancy grant to support companies with digitalisation or digital transformation issues or opportunities. Grant rate of up to 50% of eligible costs.

Typical maximum support of €35k. Available to SMEs only.
Research & Development: project grant to develop new or significantly improved digital products, services or processes. Grant rates of 25-45% depending on company size.

Please contact your Údarás na Gaeltachta Development Adviser to get further details and an application form to apply for these supports.

Funding Criteria

All projects supported will be subject to existing State Aid Requirements as well as any specific grant offer conditions.

In addition, for each of the grant offers, a test will be applied to determine eligibility under the Digital Transition Fund based on the level of ‘Digital’ focus for the project.

Criteria to include:

  • Introduction of new or significantly enhanced digital technology platforms for company operations – including supply chain analysis, information management systems, digital customer support or marketing and/or,
  • Introduction of new or significantly enhanced digital experience for customers (digital products or services), and/or,

Introduction of new capabilities to the company in digitalisation or digital transformation.

 

Environmental Compliance and Do No Significant Harm

Selected projects must comply with relevant EU and national environmental legislation and in particular with the ‘Do no significant harm’ Technical Guidance  (2021/C58/01). Specifically, the following projects are not eligible:

  • activities related to fossil fuels, including downstream use1;
  • activities under the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) achieving projected greenhouse gas emissions that are not lower than the relevant benchmarks2;
  • activities related to waste landfills, incinerators3 and mechanical biological treatment plants4; and
  • activities where the long-term disposal of waste may cause harm to the environment.

 

1 Except projects under this measure in power and/or heat generation, as well as related transmission and distribution infrastructure, using natural gas, that are compliant with the conditions set out in Annex III of the ‘Do no significant harm’ Technical Guidance (2021/C58/01).

2 Where the activity supported achieves projected greenhouse gas emissions that are not substantially lower than the relevant benchmarks an explanation of the reasons why this is not possible should be provided. Benchmarks established for free allocation for activities falling within the scope of the Emissions Trading System, as set out in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/447.

3 This exclusion does not apply to actions under this measure in plants exclusively dedicated to treating non-recyclable hazardous waste, and to existing plants, where the actions under this measure are for the purpose of increasing energy efficiency, capturing exhaust gases for storage or use or recovering materials from incineration ashes, provided such actions under this measure do not result in an increase of the plants’ waste processing capacity or in an extension of the lifetime of the plants; for which evidence is provided at plant level.

4 This exclusion does not apply to actions under this measure in existing mechanical biological treatment plants, where the actions under this measure are for the purpose of increasing energy efficiency or retrofitting to recycling operations of separated waste to compost bio-waste and anaerobic digestion of bio-waste, provided such actions under this measure do not result in an increase of the plants’ waste processing capacity or in an extension of the lifetime of the plants; for which evidence is provided at plant level.