There has been a 20% increase in the number of people employed by local SMEs.
The data was revealed by the Department of the Taoiseach in response to a parliamentary question.
Small and Medium-sized Enterprises are classified as businesses which employ less than 250 people.
Data collected by the CSOs Central Business Register revealed the number of people employed by SMEs per county for the years 2020 to 2023.
Just over 36,800 people were employed by SMEs based in the Northern Sound region in 2023.
This is a 20.6% increase on the figure of over 30,500 employees in 2020.
This is out of a total of 10,194 small businesses operating across counties Cavan and Monaghan.
Nationally, over 1.3 million people were employed by SMEs across the country as of 2023.
