Increased Cost of Business Grant
April 4, 2024
Embracing Potential over Experience
April 12, 2024
Hardware Association Ireland (HAI) members are well placed to weather the storms that may come our way. In the last few years, we have had the challenges of Brexit, Covid 19, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Now it looks like we will have to deal with a new level of costs of doing business that are imposed by our own Government. We cannot afford to have Government’s aspirations paid for by businesses. If implemented these costs will severely damage the profitability of the sector and result in further increases in the costs of housing and a collapse in Corporation Tax paid by the sector.
HAI will not acquiesce to this. At this point we are proposing that the Government decrease the level of employers PRSI to 1%. This will offset some, though not all of the increases in costs to businesses. HAI is lobbying for further changes. A research document has been produced as the output of a HAI subcommittee’s work on profitability in the industry. It was sent to all Fine Gael politicians in advance of their recent Ard Fheís and to all other politicians. It is important that we make our case especially as the local and European elections are in June.
Background
Supplying the built environment is a core competence of our members. Uniquely we are involved in all aspects of residential construction – new build, extensions, energy upgrading, empty home rejuvenation, commercial and Agri build. HAI have conducted a very extensive research project on the profitability of the merchanting and hardware sector. We received percentage P+Ls from nine merchant members and we used the audited and filed accounts of 23 members, representative of our membership geographically, by size and by business focus. Most accounts are from 2023 and we used their P&Ls supplied to get a fair and true representation of the financial health of the sector.
In brief, we now have a generic P&L for the sector. This enables us to assess the impact of changes in government policy on the profitability of the sector. see Chart 1 below:
