Dublin: Ayming, the international business performance consultancy, is expanding its international presence by opening an office in Ireland, where the team will assist and support Irish businesses extract greater value from their Research and Development (R&D) processes by better navigating the Government’s tax incentives. The business will be headed up by Martin Hook, the current Managing Director in the UK, supported by Orla O’Leary, Ayming’s expert in the region.

Ayming will be guiding a diverse range of clients of all sizes, and from a variety of sectors, through the process of applying for and receiving tax credits.

The consultancy will ensure a straightforward and successful application by using its 30 years of experience to design a programme tailored to each individual firm. Ayming’s move into Ireland will be supported by The British and Irish Trade Alliance (BITA), who have granted Ayming a platinum partnership to encourage the expansion of Ayming’s R&D expertise into Ireland.

Martin Hook at Ayming, says: “We have had tremendous success working with UK businesses, and are proud to have helped many clients realise six-fold increases in the size of their claims. We’re now incredibly excited to emulate these achievements for our Irish clients. The latest estimates from Eurostat rank Ireland 18^th out of the EU28 for Gross domestic expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP, at just 1.18%. The target is almost double that, and we believe we can close that gap. As well as this, Ireland shot up three places in Bloomberg’s annual innovation index, which takes into account factors like researcher concentration and patent activity as well as R&D activity. The opportunity is presenting itself and we are determined to be involved.”

Ayming boasts a 100 per cent success rate working for clients in the UK, having claimed more than €200m in R&D tax credits to-date.