Linked Finance raises more than €50m in new funding for SMEs
Irish peer-to-peer lender Linked Finance has raised more than €50 million in new wholesale funding that is now available to Irish SMEs.
Linked Finance connects local businesses who need loans with an online lending community, comprising members of the public, institutions and other investors who are willing to lend to Irish SMEs at attractive interest rates.
The company, which was launched in 2013, has so far facilitated more than 4,500 loans for Irish SMEs to the value of about €350 million.
The end-to-end process from initial application to receipt of funding takes about 24 hours for loans of up to €500,000, with terms of up to five years.
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The average amount borrowed has increased from €18,000 in 2013 to €115,000 today.
In the last 12 months, Linked Finance has seen significant demand across various sectors, with the top industries seeking loans including retail, construction, manufacturing and professional services.
Chief executive Niall O'Grady said the group was 'delighted' to reach the €350 million lending milestone and to see 'such significant growth' in its average loan size.
'SMEs are the absolute backbone of the Irish economy – employing two-thirds of the workforce – and we can provide them with a level of flexible and efficient support that the few remaining national pillar banks in Ireland cannot match,' he said.
'Given the significant need to improve and develop better infrastructure across the country, it is also positive to see that Irish construction and manufacturing companies are topping the sectors we lend to, as they have an important role to play in driving this forward.'
Mr O'Grady said he believes the exit of many banks from Ireland over the past 10 years has left Linked Finance 'perfectly positioned' to grow in lending and back more Irish SMEs than ever before.
'Being able to turn around a lending decision for a loan of up to €500,000 in 24 hours is a unique proposition, and our objective is always to support SMEs to achieve the growth and targets they have set, or the valuable opportunities they want to pursue,' he added.
Companies that have raised funding with the lender in the past include the Rolling Donut, Kokoro Sushi Bento and Murphy's Ice Cream.
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Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
First look: New food market gathers the best of global street food vendors in one place
Inside Priory Market in Tallaght , with no rent, low risk, and serious talent, immigrant chefs are finally getting the backing they deserve. 'I am who I am because I came from Tallaght,' says Anna Haugh , the chef-owner of Myrtle restaurant and The Wee Sister wine bar in London, currently fronting Anna Haugh's Big Irish Food Tour TV show on BBC One. She's back in Ireland next month to launch something Tallaght has never had – a food hall, brewery and roastery all under one roof, run as a social enterprise supporting immigrant communities. For Haugh it's more than a launch – it's personal. 'It's really important to me that we bring fresh energy to Tallaght – businesses, food, culture – all of it,' she says. 'People often focus on the negative. This is something positive. It's great for the newer communities, too – people who didn't live here when I was growing up in Old Bawn.' For migrant-led and small food businesses, it's the hardest thing to find: a foothold. At Priory Market, which opens to the public on Friday, June 20th, there's no rent, no fitout, just 15 per cent of turnover for access to a unit, utilities and footfall. The project is backed by the Immigrant Investor Programme (now closed). Some €3.6 million was raised from nine Chinese investors; Partas – a long-standing social enterprise based in Tallaght – contributed €400,000 more. READ MORE The model is designed for sustainability, in every sense. It's not just a local experiment – it could be a blueprint for other cities. Profits are reinvested into local jobs, training and community programmes. 'We're not a landlord,' says John Kearns, chief executive of Partas. 'We're a support structure. We don't want to trap people – we want them to grow and move on, if that's their goal. Tenants don't need capital to renovate or fit out kitchens. If someone wants to trial something – or scale it – this is where they can do it.' Haugh is particularly energised by what the market offers to immigrant communities – both those new to Tallaght and those raising Irish-born children. 'I see these kids who look totally different to me, but sound exactly like I did at their age. They're Irish. And it's beautiful to see their parents' cultures being shared – through food, especially.' Anna Haugh of Myrtle. Photograph: Andrew Ogilvy For her, food is more than sustenance; it's a way to build a life. 'Learning about food and cuisine is an important part of cultural exchange. It's how we understand each other. That's what makes Priory Market so exciting – it's not just a business space. It's a way for people to connect, to start small, and to be seen,' she says. 'Hospitality is one of those rare jobs where you can learn a proper skill, and use it to work for someone – or start something yourself, even from your house. It doesn't have to be big jumps or investors. Just doing something you believe in. You can build from that. Maybe even an empire.' Priory Market takes its name from the nearby St Mary's Priory, one of the most significant early monastic settlements in Ireland. Though the market isn't on the original site, it sits just around the corner from the St Mary's ruins – a Church of Ireland site that includes remnants of the original monastery, The Pale wall, and the site of a Fenian uprising. Plans are in place to introduce a walking tour linking the market to these historic landmarks. The vendors at Priory Market have been carefully selected – most are family-run – and together span a wide range of cuisines. These include Delhi2Dublin's handmade Indian dishes, Afro-Caribbean flavours from Bless Up, and Venezuelan street food from Flavouritos. Seoul Kitchen brings Korean classics, while El Milagro serves Mexican dishes from a mother-and-son team. Zaira focuses on Lebanese cooking with Brazilian roots, there is fresh pasta from Buongusto , Mama's Boy serves Vietnamese banh mi; and Hell Fire Grill centres on fire-cooked meats and plant-based options. Tallaght local, Warren Mahon, offers Asian street food with bold, balanced flavours at Park 27. Coke Lane Pizza – located beside the on-site brewery – rounds out the line-up with wood-fired pizza. Cochinita pibil tacos from Maribel Pascual and Julian Trejo of El Milagro Patrizio Di Pietrantonio and Andree Danalache with tagliatelle and meatballs at Buongusto Warren Mahon of Park 27 with khao soi gai - coconut curry broth served on egg noodles with chicken coriander lime, shallots and chilli oil Ricardo Solis, head brewer at the Priory Market Everything at Priory Market must be 100 per cent compostable – packaging is preapproved, and compost bins are placed throughout, with signage to guide proper disposal. 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Femi and Margaret Abonde are the husband and wife team behind Bless Up, a modern African-Caribbean food business that first opened in Tallaght's Belgard Square. Their original restaurant gained a loyal following for its bold, home-style cooking – but despite strong demand, the scale and cost of running a full restaurant proved unsustainable. 'It was just taking too much from both of us,' says Femi, who has worked in the hospitality industry for nearly two decades. The pair handed the unit over without financial loss and rethought their business model. Now they're relaunching Bless Up at the market, in a format that's leaner, sharper and more sustainable. Femi Abonde of Bless Up 'It's the cheapest place to trade,' says Femi. 'You don't have to worry about renovations, maintenance, or heavy overheads. It lets you just focus on the food.' The couple have refined and streamlined their original menu. They're serving modern takes on traditional west African and Caribbean dishes – jollof rice with boneless chicken, jerk chicken and rice, shawarma-style wraps with African spices, and their signature Blessed Burger made with marinated, 100 per cent chicken thigh. Spice levels are customisable, and everything is made in-house. 'It's a low-cost way of doing food,' says Femi. 'We're using proper equipment, keeping everything in-house, locking in flavour – but without the stress and cost of a full restaurant.' Beyond the food, they value the collaborative atmosphere Priory Market is creating. 'There's this family feel,' says Margaret. 'Everyone's sharing ideas, helping each other out. We're all here for the same reason – to get our food out there and let people experience what we grew up with.' Another new tenant is Delhi2Dublin – a family business that's making the leap from weekend markets to a permanent home. 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Priory Market in Tallaght will be open to the public seven days a week from Friday, June 20th, 11am-11pm, with a coffee shop from 8am.
RTÉ News
6 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Did Ireland's 'bad bank' NAMA work?
At the height of the financial crisis in 2009 Ireland set up the National Asset Management Agency, better known as NAMA. Its purpose was to deal with the loans given by banks to developers and builders - many of which would never be repaid. By any measure, it was one of the biggest decisions in the State's history, taken by a Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition. With unemployment rising, taxes increasing and general loathing of boomtime bankers, there was little surprise it was an unpopular decision. At the time, the Government had guaranteed the Irish banks, which meant that the Irish taxpayer was on the hook for their losses. The financial institutions were highly exposed to the plunging property market. Confidence in the banks steadily ebbed and it became impossible to calculate the losses they faced. As banking was grinding to a halt, loss of confidence fed into the wider economy, which was rapidly contracting. The bond market, which had provided funding to banks, walked away from the Irish financial system. Irish banks had to borrow from the European Central Bank through a mechanism called emergency liquidity assistance. The amounts borrowed from the ECB began to rocket and alarm spread across the euro zone about the unfolding banking crisis in Ireland. The challenge was how to stop the rot in the Irish financial system. One of those involved in designing a mechanism to deal with the banks; bad loans was Professor Alan Ahearne who was advisor to the late Brian Lenihan, Minister for Finance during the crash. Professor Ahearne advocated using an Asset Management Company (AMC) to deal with the problem: "I had seen AMCs used previously when I was at the Federal Reserve in the US. This was a prominent tool used before." It was deployed in South Korea and Malaysia during the Asian crash and in the US to deal with the Savings & Loans crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. 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Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ireland will have to commit substantial funds to arms procurement whether it approves or not
All they talk about in Brussels these days is defence. And with a sense of urgency and common political will that is a product of real fear that the EU itself is existentially threatened . A fear that the threats from Russia to Ukraine – regarded, as one senior European Commission official put it, as a 'de facto member state' – and Vladimir Putin 's wider ambitions against former Soviet states now part of the union are serious. And that the US can no longer be relied on for military support or even nuclear deterrence. The talk is all of meeting new Nato targets of raising defence spending to between three and five per cent of GDP. Russia, member states are warned, has been massively expanding its military-industrial production capacity with an estimated spending in 2024 of 40 per cent of the federal budget and up to 9 per cent of its GDP (up from 6 per cent in 2023) on defence, a commitment only possible in an autocratic state impervious to public sentiment. Ireland, despite its new commitment to bolster its army, remains the poorest performer in the EU class at 0.5 per cent this year. Member states' defence spending has grown by more than 31 per cent since 2021, reaching 1.9 per cent of the EU's combined GDP or €326bn in 2024, almost double the amount spent in 2021. Not enough, however; now a target of €800 billion in the next few years is being discussed. A measure of how seriously the debate is being taken has been the union's willingness with unprecedented speed to raise its sacrosanct fiscal rules, allowing member states to break debt limits to expand their military spending . READ MORE The thrust is now being driven by the EU White Paper on Defence Preparedness 2025, published recently. It was the subject of a well-attended debate this week in the Institute for International and European Affairs, which turned inevitably to the issue of Ireland's own national preparedness and its role next year in steering the EU presidency discussions. Centre stage will be the roll-out of the white paper proposals to revitalise states' military capacity and transform national defence industries to break reliance on foreign, notably US, imported weapons. A new defence financing initiative, Safe, will see the European Investment Bank raise €150 billion to lend to the private sector on condition 65 per cent of loans are for European-produced weapons. Ireland is not planning to dip into the fund, but Minister of State for Defence Thomas Byrne told the meeting that, in the spirit of 'principles-based pragmatism', we might yet do so. Ireland will also have charge of brokering a deal on the next seven-year budget (the Multiannual Financial Framework, or MFF). The process always severely stretches member-state solidarity and will particularly test them this time, with a huge increase in collective defence spending being proposed. That, at a time when all are cash-strapped, will require a massive breach of the one per cent of EU GDP budget spending ceiling, or as Prof Brigid Laffan warned, 'tough trade-offs' on long-standing policy areas. Like agriculture. Ireland cannot stand on the sidelines. It will necessarily have to commit substantial funds to arms procurement as a net contributor to the MFF, like all others, whether or not it approves. [ Parlous state of Defence Forces once again laid bare Opens in new window ] The EU white paper bears a remarkable resemblance in its scope and thrust to the paper produced in Ireland in 2022 by the Commission on the Defence Forces and which prompted our own commitment to major upgrading of the Defence Forces. The white paper, the EU Commission's senior defence official, Guilaume de la Brosse, insists, is not about redefining EU defence policy 'but about the specificities of member states, serving national agendas', and both starting a discussion about preparedness and capabilities and pointing to a way in which the needs may be addressed more efficiently, collectively and individually. The white paper projects are all 'voluntary'. Like the Irish commission's silence on neutrality's merits, it is not saying European collective defence must take a particular form, but that if you want a capability to deter aggression then this is how to do it – and it is best done collectively, ensuring interoperability and as little duplication as possible. [ Poll shows Ireland's attachment to neutrality is strong but nuanced Opens in new window ] Critical to getting both imperatives through will be important changes in the nature of defence discussions throughout the EU – not least in Ireland, where the debate has largely been confined to political and policy circles. Both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have engaged strongly, echoing common EU-wide concerns, but public opinion remains largely indifferent, albeit clinging to vague, often contradictory notions of 'neutrality'. There is often an unwillingness to acknowledge the need to upgrade our defensive capacity or even a need for it. A fundamental challenge remains a public unwillingness to perceive real new vulnerabilities or threats to ourselves – like to our vital undersea cable networks or to cyber attacks, or threats to the territorial integrity of our European partners – as urgent and requiring radical action. Although sympathetic to their plight, and generously receptive of refugees, Irish voters have yet to recognise that their problem is our problem, a real threat to our union, and to develop a real sense of obligation to fellow members of the union arising from our membership of this huge 'peace project'. From a narrow national perspective, as Minister Byrne acknowledged, 'working together is the only way forward'. This debate urgently needs to expand beyond Dáil Éireann's narrow confines.
