The Third Most Popular Location for Start-Ups

GALWAY is third most popular location for business start-ups with 183 new businesses established in the past quarter, according to the latest Bank of Ireland Business Start-up Barometer.Bank of Ireland Business Banking yesterday issued its latest Business Start-up Barometer that tracks the number of business start-ups in Ireland. The Barometer shows that, despite the recent slowdown in the economy, 4,082 new businesses have been established in the past quarter.While this figure represents a 14% decrease in new limitedcompanies formed compared to this time last year (4,765), the rate of decline is slowing. The number of start-up companies in Q1 this year (4,109) was 22% less than Q1 in 2007 (5,276). These figures suggest that the number of new companies being set up has improved somewhat, rather than declined further.Much of the decrease has been the result of the significant and expected downturn in the Construction sector, which fell by 10% this quarter compared to Q1 (260 companies were set up in the Construction sector in Q2 versus 304 companies in Q1).This represents a 45% decrease compared to the same period in 2007.The Barometer also identified a decrease of 32% in the number of accounting, book-keeping and auditing businesses set up this quarter (38 companies were set up in Q2 versus 56 companies in Q1). However, the number of companies set up within the software and consultancy sector has increased. 126 software and consultancy businesses were...