Ireland lags behind EU average on creation of businesses

State catching up with higher-than-average increase in number of new companies

Ireland ranks below the European Union average for its overall share of new businesses, but that may be changing rapidly.

In 2017, almost one in ten businesses in the EU were new, with 9.3 per cent recorded as having started that year, according to new data from Eurostat. In Ireland, the figure was 8.2 per cent.

Enterprise “birth rates” varied across member states, with the highest rates in Lithuania (19.7 per cent), Portugal (15.8 ...