The Government has welcomed the European Commission’s decision to approve a scheme to help businesses with their energy costs over the winter.

The Temporary Business Energy Support Scheme (TBESS), announced in Budget 2023, required EU approval under state-aid rules.

The commission concluded that the Irish scheme was “necessary, appropriate and proportionate to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of a member state”, under a framework set up to look at measures linked to the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Registrations to open

The scheme will be administered by Revenue, which will now open the TBESS online system for registrations on Saturday 26 November.

Businesses will then use the system to submit claims under the scheme from 5 December.

Payments under the scheme will be made once Finance Bill 2022, which contains the legislation underpinning the scheme, is enacted in December.

Revenue recently published detailed guidelines on the operation of the TBESS, but these are to be updated later today (25 November).

Leo Varadkar (Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment) urged business owners and managers to have their bills and tax-clearance certificates ready, in order to make sure that Revenue could process claims without delay.