Minister Alan Shatter Announces Two New Investment Programmes

The Minister for Justice, Equality & Defence, Mr. Alan Shatter, announced that he had secured the approval for the introduction of two new immigration initiatives. The initiatives are aimed at facilitating non EEA entrepreneurs and investors. 

These two initiatives will be named The Immigrant Investor Programme and The Start-up Entrepreneur Programme. In return for legally being allowed to reside in the State, non EEA entrepreneurs should be prepared to invest here, thus creating and saving more jobs.

Currently, the business permission scheme for non EEA investors, asks the applicant to have a minimum of €300,000 to invest in an Irish business project. It must create two or more full time jobs for EEA nationals in a new project, or maintain employment numbers in the already existing business. Although this scheme has been in place for a long time it is unsuitable for the purposes of attracting start-ups with great potential and secondly, it does not help in the discovery of potential investors that are present, internationally.

The Immigrant Investor Programme

The Immigrant Investor Programme allows the investor and their immediate family members to live in the State and stay here for a defined period, in most cases, up to five years, which will then be reviewed after the first two.

The range of investment options available to non EEA investor are as follows:

• A once off endowment of a minimum of €400,000 to a public project benefiting the arts, sports, health or education.
• A minimum €2,000,000 investment in a low interest immigrant investor bond. The investment is to be held for a minimum of five years. The details of the investment will be finalised with the National Treasury Management Agency in the coming weeks. The bond will be offered exclusively to participants in this scheme and will not be tradable on any market.
• A minimum €1,000,000 venture capital funding into an Irish business for a minimum of three years. An investment into an Irish publicly quoted company could be considered but the investment level would have to be much higher.
• A minimum €1,000,000 mixed investment in 50% property and 50% in Government securities. Special consideration could be given to those purchasing property, in the State, which have been enforced by NAMA. In such cases a single €1m investment in property might be sufficient. (N.B. the minimum investment threshold for mixed investments will be dependent on the type of investments proposed and will be determined on a pro rata basis)

Next week, we'll be touching on the Start-up Entrepreneur Programme so don't forget to keep up to date with our blog via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

From all of us at Shannons Solicitors, we hope you have a nice weekend.