Financial support for Salons during COVID-19
These
are unprecedented times and it can be quite overwhelming. So, to help with
this, we’ve brought together a round-up of the financial support available to
you. If you bookmark this page, we’ll do our best to update this article as new
support packages are announced, but you may also want to bookmark these key
pages:
Government
Support for Businesses Impacted by COVID-19
Citizen’s
Information COVID-19 Overview
Microfinance Ireland
What financial support is available to salons during
the coronavirus pandemic?
The
government have announced a range of financial support packages available to
businesses and individuals that range from loans and grants to deferred bills.
If you ran a salon you have several new options available:
Access
to Loans
The
government have announced several credit guarantee schemes for small to medium
sized businesses.
The
first is the aptly named SME
Credit Guarantee Scheme, giving businesses
impacted by the pandemic a greater chance of access to loans of up to €1m.
The
second, which may be of particular interest to many of our salon customers, is
the Microfinance
Ireland Covid-19 Business Loan. You could qualify for a loan of up
to €50,000 if you have less than 10 full-time employees and less than €2m
annual turnover. You can apply for a Microfinance loan here.
Temporary
COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme
The
scheme, run by Revenue, will allow employers to continue to pay their employees
during the coronavirus pandemic. The scheme will run for 12 weeks and started
on the 26th March 2020. Essentially the scheme will refund employers
up to a maximum of €410 per week for each qualifying employee. As the
salon owner you do not qualify under this scheme, but instead should apply for
the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment, below. For more details on the wage
subsidy scheme, click
here.
COVID-19
Pandemic Unemployment Payment
The
new COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment is available to employees,
self-employed people, students and non-EEA nationals who have lost all their
employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The payment has a simple one–page
application form and is paid at a flat rate payment of €350 per week. Read more
on the new COVID-19
Pandemic Unemployment Payment here.
Various
Personal Support Packages
The 5 retail banks (AIB,
Bank of Ireland, KBC, Permanent tsb and Ulster Bank), along with their
representative body Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) have announced
a series of measures to support personal customers and businesses impacted by
the COVID-19 pandemic.
These include:
·
A payment
break of up to 3 months for businesses and personal customers. If you want to
request a payment break, you should contact your bank directly.
·
A simplified
application process to make it easy for businesses and personal customers to
get support from their bank.
·
A solution to
ensure that COVID-19 applications for a payment break will not affect credit
ratings.
·
Deferral of
court proceedings for 3 months.
If you are experiencing
financial difficulty during the COVID-19 pandemic, you should contact your bank
as soon as possible to discuss the options available.
In addition, many credit
card companies, utilities companies and various other organisations which you
may usually have a bill from are extending payment dates and giving greater
access to credit. Get in touch with yours to find out how they can help.
For more information on the
personal financial support available, click here.
Keeping you up to date
For
the our latest updates on financial support available, as well as other
industry-related coronavirus updates and what we are doing to help you through
this time, you can visit our dedicated
Covid-19 support page here.
We’ll
also be bringing you some great new content to help keep you entertained whilst
on lockdown, as well as expert advice on how to utilise the downtime to improve
your business in preparation for when the doors open again. Head over to our inspiration section
for more!
