Enterprise Ireland GreenStart

GreenStart funds a short assignment with an approved environmental consultant to establish a company's sustainability baseline and a practical improvement plan. Published support has run to a fixed quote, and it is commonly the first step before larger climate and resource-efficiency funding under Enterprise Ireland's green transition supports. Client companies facing customer or regulatory pressure on carbon and resource reporting.

What this scheme funds

Up to a fixed quote toward an environmental consultant and a costed sustainability plan.

  • Approved environmental consultant assignment
  • Baseline measurement of energy, waste and emissions
  • A prioritised improvement plan
  • Preparation for customer sustainability reporting requirements

What it does not fund

These costs are routinely ruled ineligible under this scheme.

  • Physical works
  • Equipment
  • Ongoing consultancy beyond the assignment

Who is eligible

Eligibility is decided by Enterprise Ireland, not by Digital Bridge.

  • Enterprise Ireland client company (check current eligibility, which has varied by call)
  • Use of an approved consultant from the panel

How to apply

Typical end-to-end timeline: Usually four to eight weeks to approval, with the assignment itself running a few weeks.

  • Confirm current eligibility with your development adviser
  • Select a consultant from the approved panel
  • Apply before the assignment starts
  • Complete the assignment and claim

Evidence you will need

Applications are usually delayed by missing paperwork rather than by weak projects.

  • Consultant proposal
  • Company details
  • Completed report on claim

Why applications get rejected

The recurring reasons assessors give under this scheme.

  • Consultant not on the approved panel
  • Work already started

What Digital Bridge delivers under this scheme

Illustrative net cost applies the published rate (Published support has run to 80% of consultancy cost) to our published engagement bands. It is arithmetic, not an offer of funding.

  • Implementation of the GreenStart consultant's digital actions — list from €2,500, illustrative net cost Not covered by GreenStart — the grant pays the assigned consultant's days only

Who decides this grant, and what we are responsible for

Enterprise Ireland decides eligibility, approval and payment under this scheme. Digital Bridge supplies the work and the documentation an assessor asks for from the supplier side.

  • Digital Bridge does not administer, assess, approve, pay or appeal any grant. Every decision is made by the funding body named on the scheme, under its own published rules.
  • This section is general information, not financial, tax, legal or grant-writing advice. It is not an application, a pre-approval, or any form of assurance that you will be funded.
  • Scheme rates, ceilings and eligibility change without notice and several supports are administered locally, so your Local Enterprise Office or agency may apply different rules to the ones published here. Confirm everything with the funder in writing before you commit.
  • Our questionnaire is a deterministic guide based only on the answers you give. It cannot see your accounts, your sector classification, your state-aid position or your previous awards, so it can suggest a scheme you are ultimately found ineligible for.
  • If an application is refused, delayed, reduced or clawed back, our fees for work you have instructed remain payable. We recommend you do not instruct chargeable work until your funder confirms in writing what it will support.
  • Costs incurred before a funder receives your application are almost always ineligible. Timing is your responsibility, and we will always tell you when we think you should wait.

How the GreenStart works in practice

GreenStart funds a short assignment by an approved environmental consultant to establish a company's environmental baseline and identify improvement measures. It is deliberately small and deliberately introductory: the objective is to get companies started on structured environmental management rather than to fund the improvements themselves. Output is typically a report with prioritised actions, and the value depends on whether the company then acts on it. Companies increasingly come to GreenStart because a large customer has sent them a sustainability questionnaire they cannot answer. That is a perfectly good reason, and it tends to produce more follow-through than an application driven purely by intent.

What we do as the supplier on the quote

Our role, when there is one, is making the resulting measurements repeatable. A baseline report is a snapshot; the customers asking the questions want current figures next year too. Where a business needs consumption, waste or transport data captured and reported without someone rebuilding a spreadsheet every quarter, that is a reasonable scope for us. What we will not do is help present an environmental position the underlying data does not support. Overstated sustainability claims are an enforcement risk in Ireland and the EU, and the exposure sits with the business making the claim.

What does a GreenStart assignment actually produce?

GreenStart funds a short expert assignment, and companies sometimes expect a transformation from what is, by design, a starting point. The realistic output is a baseline, a small number of prioritised actions and enough structure that environmental performance can be managed rather than guessed at. That is genuinely valuable, but it is preparation for change rather than the change itself. The assignments that go well have an internal owner with the authority to gather data across departments and the time to work alongside the adviser. The ones that stall are the ones where the adviser is passed between people, none of whom own the outcome. Decide who that person is before you apply, and say so in the application.

Is this the same as Green for Micro?

No. Green for Micro is the Local Enterprise Office equivalent for micro-enterprises and carries no cash award. GreenStart sits with Enterprise Ireland and funds a paid consultant assignment.

Does GreenStart pay for the improvements the consultant recommends?

No — it funds the consultancy assignment and the resulting plan. Implementation costs need separate funding, and other schemes may apply depending on the measure. Sequence the work so the plan exists before you commit capital.

Source and last review

Scheme parameters checked against Enterprise Ireland — Climate and Sustainability Supports (https://www.enterprise-ireland.com/en/supports) on 2026-08-21. Reviewed quarterly. Next scheduled review: November 2026. Digital Bridge is a supplier, not the awarding body. Eligibility, approval and payment are decided solely by the funding body named on each scheme. Figures below are the published scheme parameters as at the review date shown, and net costs are arithmetic illustrations of the published rate applied to our published prices. Always confirm current rules with the funder before you commit to any spend, because expenditure incurred before an application is received is almost always ineligible.

Who should apply for GreenStart, and what does it actually pay for?

GreenStart suits an Enterprise Ireland client company under pressure from a customer or regulator to report on carbon or resource use, and that has not yet had a baseline environmental assessment done. Published support has run to a fixed quote toward an assignment with an approved environmental consultant from Enterprise Ireland's panel, covering a baseline measurement of energy, waste and emissions and a prioritised improvement plan. It does not fund physical works, equipment or ongoing consultancy beyond that initial assignment — it is a diagnostic step, commonly the first move before larger climate or resource-efficiency supports. Applications are most likely to fail where the chosen consultant is not on the approved panel, or where the assignment has already started before approval is granted. Confirm your current eligibility with your development adviser, since eligibility criteria have varied by call, and select the consultant from the panel before applying rather than after.

How does a digital project connect to a GreenStart plan?

GreenStart itself will not fund any implementation Digital Bridge might carry out — the grant pays only the assigned consultant's days, and the consultant's report is the deliverable it funds. What we typically see is a company using the consultant's prioritised plan as the basis for a separate, self-funded or otherwise grant-supported project, for example a workflow automation build that reduces paper-based processes the assessment flagged, or a monitoring dashboard that tracks the metrics the consultant baselined. If digital tooling is one of the improvement plan's recommendations, treat it as a distinct next step with its own quote and, where applicable, its own funding application under something like the Digital Transition Fund, rather than trying to fold it into the GreenStart claim. Note the important distinction from the Local Enterprise Office's Green for Micro support, which offers advisory days with no cash award and sits at a different scale. Confirm current panel membership and call eligibility with Enterprise Ireland; the awarding body decides all funding outcomes, and nothing here guarantees approval.

How we decide what to quote for Ei Greenstart

Digital Bridge delivers this work from Gorey Business Park in County Wexford on a fixed written scope — one price, one delivery date — and the client owns the finished work outright. GreenStart funds a short assignment with an approved environmental consultant to establish a company's sustainability baseline and a practical improvement plan. Before a figure is given, four questions are answered in order, and a named person signs the scope off — it is never generated automatically.

  1. Is this the right job at all? We look at what you already have online, whether the domain and Google Business Profile are in your own name, and what Ei Greenstart customers currently ask you for. If a repair or a single page would solve it, we quote that instead.
  2. What does the work have to achieve first? The scope is written around one outcome — enquiries, bookings, orders or credibility — and anything else is listed as optional so it can be dropped without renegotiating.
  3. What will it cost and when will it be live? Page count, content readiness, integrations and whether photography or copy still has to be produced set the price and the date, both fixed in writing before work starts.
  4. How will people in Ei Greenstart find it afterwards? Local search setup is included in a build; ongoing SEO is a separate optional retainer you can start or stop with notice.

Checkable facts behind this Ei Greenstart page

Author and reviewer: Joey Bray, founder of Digital Bridge, building and maintaining Irish business websites since 2016. Studio address: Gorey Business Park, Gorey, Co. Wexford. Phone: 085 224 1848. Every claim below can be checked before you speak to us.

  • Published starting prices, not estimates released after a sales call — see the pricing page for the full ladder.
  • Live client sites you can open and test yourself are listed in the work section.
  • One contact from first call to launch, rather than an account handler relaying messages.
  • A plain-text mirror of this page is published for AI assistants at the same path with a .md extension.