KPMG held their annual Budget Breakfast briefing in Dublin's Mansion House this morning, which was attended by around 400 people.
People from a cross section of businesses gathered for analysis and reactions to the measures announced in Budget 2026, after less than 24 hours to digest all the information.
Camilla Cullinane, Tax Partner with KPMG, said there were lots of tasters for Irish business and she hopes that these can be built on.
"There have been improvements to the R&D tax credit and it has been signalled that additional measures will also be implemented," said Ms Cullinane.
"We have been asking for amendments to the foreign participation dividend regime and welcome amendments are being made there, also SARP has been extended which is key to helping relocate key executives to Ireland," she added.
Ms Cullinane welcomed the VAT reduction to 9% for food and catering businesses acknowledging that this is likely to be passed on to help with the rising cost of employment and to maintain employees.
"The cost of employment is increasing across the board, with increases in the minimum wage," she said.
"PRSI rates have increased since 1 October, which wasn't in the budget but previously legislated for, and of course we've auto-enrolment coming from next January," she added.
While broadly positive about the new measures, Ms Cullinane highlighted that the amendments to Entrepreneur Relief (rising from €1m to €1.5m) are welcomed, but more needs to be done to incentivise entrepreneurs that succeed and scale to maintain their headquarters in Ireland.
For housing, one of the biggest changes is the is the VAT reduction from 13.5% to 9% on the sale of completed apartments.
Speaking to RTE's Morning Ireland programme from the event, private housing developer Evara's CEO Michael Hynes said the initial reaction from the house building industry is hugely welcoming to the new budget measures.
"Unless you're living under a rock, I think everyone in the country knows we're in the middle of a house building crisis, 30,000 houses are only being delivered where we need to be delivering 60,000 houses a year to meet the demand," said Mr Hynes.
"Viability is okay in delivering low density traditional housing, but the real problem is delivering high density apartments. A lot of people don't know this, but 50% of that 60,000 houses a year needs to be apartments, we don't have the land for low density, nor will the National Development Plan allow it as height as needed in urban areas and transport," he explained
"The budget measures announced yesterday, in particular the 4.5% cut in new homes VAT, and when you combine that with other government announcements recently, the rent reform and the new sustainable apartment guidelines bringing down the cost of delivering houses means house builders now should get on and build, build, build apartments," he said.
"There's 50,000 planning permits out there and it's our job now to get those activated in the next three to six months and mobilise as an industry," said Mr Hynes.
The Government has described the budget as "sensible" and one which will "protect jobs and protect growth" in Ireland given an uncertain global economy.
"We lobbied hard for a pro-enterprise budget and they certainly have delivered that," said Guaranteed Irish CEO Brid O'Connell.
"It's been quite brave actually of the government I think, so kudos to them, there's a lot of negative talk about it but in actual fact to make an omelette you have to crack an egg, we have to start somewhere," she said.
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"We have to get behind the infrastructure developments through the National Development Plan funding that's been put in place, and we also have to support building - if we have houses we have people who are working in towns, who can come to towns and be housed and they can support the economy. We need those jobs to be kept and we need to be kept competitive, so I think that has to be welcomed," said Ms O'Connell.
There are also broad welcomes in terms of funding for digitalisation, AI and knowledge transfer, according to Ms O'Connell who said a focus on upskilling an education is really important, particularly for SMEs struggling with the minimum wage increase, the increase in PRSI and auto enrolment.
She warned more support is need for these businesses and they will be pushing hard for that.
This morning's event was attended by business leaders across the breadth of Irish business, who offered "a real diversity of views", commented KPMG Partner Sean Sheridan.
He said one measure highlighted across the board was the increase in the Research and Development tax credit.
"It's an area that impacts businesses which are large, small, international and domestic. People are welcoming the refundable tax credit at 35%, it really does go to supporting existing jobs and creating new jobs," said Mr Sheridan.
"It also benefits home-grown businesses of every size and for the smaller ones, there is more cash back at an earlier stage, which is welcome to see," he said.
Despite positive feedback on measures around the commitment to the simplification of the tax code, entrepreneurs' relief and certain stamp duty reliefs for SMEs traded on regulated markets, Mr Sheridan flagged more action is needed.
"The Government should be focused on reforming the existing reliefs that are in place to encourage home-grown Irish businesses to be able to attract that capital, grow and scale from Ireland," he said.
"We didn't really see that in the budget, particularly at a time when we have increased costs through PRSI and minimum wage," he concluded.
