The Irish Petrol Retailers Association IPRA) has expressed serious concern at how petrol retailers are being treated by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE).

David Blevings, spokesperson for the IPRA said, “Retailers across the country were able to access the Increased Cost of Business Grant scheme (ICOB) and without clear guidance from DETE, many filling stations denoted themselves as “other” rather than ‘”retail” on the application form.

They did not realise that this made them ineligible for ICOB grant 2 for which only “retail” were eligible. There was no application required for ICOB Grant2 so petrol retailers assumed they would soon receive this grant. It was only when they needed to apply for the new PowerUp Grant that retailers realised they were ineligible to apply for this (and also wouldn’t be receiving ICOB2) because to be eligible they needed to have categorised themselves as “retail” and not “other”.

This ‘technicality is absurd and leaves them short of both IBOC2 and the PowerUp Grant”

This is a very unfair situation and the IPRA is calling on DETE to urgently facilitate the re-opening of the application portal so that affected retailers can make one small adjustment, switching from “other” to “retail” in their business type. This small change is worth thousands to struggling vulnerable retailers, for whom the grant was supposed to support.

This issue is affecting many retailers across the country the DETE to urgently fix this issue for all retailers affected. In addition, a Wexford based retailer didn’t get their log in details from Wexford CoCo in time to apply for ICOB1 so has now lost out on all 3 grants, despite being a retailer. The Kilkenny County Council has confirmed that “The online system for ICOB is closed for edit and will not allow system users to edit classification as set out above. IPRA has asked for and received no further update on this matter from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in relation to the reclassification of businesses in the scenario outlined above.

“A common message from any Council that we raise the issue with is, “We note the query and are maintaining a list of such cases”. DLR County Council has confirmed “The County Council have no power to amend this at present.  We have instructions from the DETE that no changes are to be made to the ICOB database, including business type. If the Department change this, we will be happy to help, but as it stands, we do not have the authority to do this.” The solution appears to lie with the DETE who we call on to urgently help retailers across the country, added David.