ENTERPRISE IRELAND is to make substantial changes to the criteria for assistance under the employment subsidy scheme.

An Enterprise Ireland spokesman said: “It is recognised that there are problems with the rigidity of the eligibility criteria for the employment subsidy scheme.”

“The €250 million fund is undersubscribed to start with, so Enterprise Ireland has looked at a number of proposed amendments and moves to relax the criteria will be happening sooner rather than later,” he added.

The initiative, which supports the retention of jobs in exporting companies which have been unduly affected by the global financial crisis, was criticised yesterday by Isme, the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association.

The group dismissed the application process as inflexible and called for the extension of the scheme to assist all firms that have employees at risk. Isme highlighted that there were just 561 applications for Government support out of a pool of more than 400,000 businesses in Ireland.

Chief executive Mark Fielding said the Government had adopted a piecemeal approach to the economic crisis which needed to be immediately reversed.

“The Government must initiate an overall recovery strategy that will tackle the local negative factors impacting on the business sector, particularly excessive costs, late payments and lack of access to finance,” he said.