Over the past few months I have been reflecting on how policy-driven costs are affecting Ireland’s SMEs. I began in west Cork where I visited four excellent businesses. Since then, I’ve been ruminating on the existential crisis that many businesses like these face due to increasing business costs, most of which are driven by government policy. The business types I visited, and subsequently analysed over a series of columns, were in a wide range of sectors: pharmacy, grocery, restaurants and pubs. The purpose of this analysis was to show how the profit-and-loss (P&L) account would look in 2026 for an…

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