Dublin Region
(Dublin City, South Dublin, Fingal & Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown)

Dublin has developed strongly in many sectoral areas, including fintech, ICT, construction and MedTech, with a good balance of manufacturing and Internationally Traded Services activity. The region is home to a number of high-profile, high-achieving indigenous companies such as Luzern Technology Solutions and Ding.

Dublin has seen important company expansions that further endorse the region as a great place to start and grow a business. Outmin, Noum, LearnUpon and Flipdish are some of the companies that announced further expansion and job creation in recent years.

From an entrepreneurship perspective, Enterprise Ireland funds the New Frontiers Programme delivered by TU Dublin Blanchardstown, Tallaght and Grangegorman, IADT and recent partners Nova UCD. New Frontiers has a proven track record of supporting early-stage entrepreneurs and helping them develop into successful start-ups and scaling companies. Since 2017, 321 entrepreneurs have completed phase 2 of the New Frontiers Programme, and 933 entrepreneurs have completed phase 1 in the region.

The Dublin region continues to perform strongly in generating HSPUs with 150 securing Enterprise Ireland investments since 2018. This highlights the region’s importance as a location for high potential entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses.

In recent years, the region has produced several high potential start-ups of note that are making significant progress internationally and growing employment. These include virtual reality simulation training provider ‘VRAI’, online grocery delivering platform ‘Buymie’, and cybersecurity automation platform ‘Tines’.

Enterprise Ireland works closely with the four Dublin LEO’s in progressing companies from the Local Enterprise Office into HPSU and Exporter Development divisions.

Dublin has a wide base of successful SME companies across all sectors from ICT, fintech, food, MedTech and engineering. An area that has been brought into focus in recent times is the necessity to grow the number of Irish exporting SMEs. The region has a successful cohort of domestically traded companies across all sectors. Enterprise Ireland has added a dedicated team of Development Advisors to the region to work directly with companies with exporting potential. The aim is to drive new growth through developing ambitious exporting strategies and bolstering management capability.

The success of Irish-grown companies, from entrepreneurship to start-up, scale-up and global success, requires investment in regional development supports such as accelerators, enterprise centres and industry clusters. We funded and supported several important regional development initiatives and investments across Dublin that are significant catalysts and economic drivers for the region.

• Under the Regional Enterprise Development Fund, seven drivers of change were supported to the value of €11.5m (those drivers were Dublin Enterprise and Technology Centre t/a Guinness Enterprise Centre, Ghala DAC (Trinity College Dublin), Social and Local Enterprise Alliance DAC, Innovate Dublin Communities CLG, BDO Cluster, SPADE Enterprise Centre, LINC Collaboratory).
• Seventeen centres were funded under the Enterprise Centre Fund, which was established to provide eligible enterprise centres with financial support to implement a Recovery Plan.
• The Enterprise Centre Fund had the objective of strengthening the underlying viability of the centres to enable them to continue to deliver value-added support to client companies.
• HEIs, including UCD, Trinity College Dublin, TU Dublin, DCU and IADT in the Dublin region, play a significant role in partnership with Enterprise Ireland in supporting client companies to innovate.
• The region benefits from major third-level institutions which work collaboratively with Enterprise Ireland to support innovation and research by client companies.
• Global gifting platform and SaaS firm &Open announced the creation of 100 new jobs by the end of 2022, with positions being offered in product, engineering, sales, customer success and operations.
• HealthBeacon, a medical technology company, aims to triple its workforce to 150 with 100 new jobs in the next two years.
• Irish eCommerce company ChannelSight announced the creation of 60 new jobs by the end of the first half of 2022 to meet demands arising from moving to a “digital shelf” analytical space from new and existing clients.
• The GEC, a top global incubator based in Dublin City, will support the creation of over 300 additional jobs through additional resident companies and will support an additional 1,500 direct jobs over the next five years.
• Two Enterprise Centres in County Dublin awarded funding under the Regional Enterprise Transition Scheme 2021.

Collaboration underpins Enterprise Ireland’s Regional Development remit. The Dublin team works closely with important regional stakeholders to deliver enterprise development supports that drive the growth of start-ups and established client companies. These include the four Local Enterprise Offices in Dublin City, Dublin South, Fingal and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, the New Frontiers Programme team at TU Dublin, IADT and Nova UCD and the Regional Skills Forum as well as Regional Enterprise Planning groups.