Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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435. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the reason there was an underspend of €38,250,000 for the disruptive technology fund in 2022. [27390/23]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Disruptive Technologies and Innovation Fund (DTIF) was set up in 2018 as one of four National Development Plan (NDP) Funds established by the Government under Project Ireland 2040. It aims to encourage collaborative and innovative research to develop and deploy disruptive technologies commercially to target national and global challenges.

In 2022, my Department provided €28.75m of DTIF funding to Enterprise Ireland to meet the claims from partners in the 72 projects approved in the first three DTIF Calls. This additional spending brought the total expenditure to €89.5m since the Fund was initiated.

Expenditure during 2022 was less than profiled and this was due to a number of factors including, slower than expected claims from client companies, lower levels of project activity and no-cost extensions due to the limited access permitted to research facilities during COVID-19 and the termination of a small number of projects. Also, in 2022, to strengthen compliance with the General Block Extension Regulation (GBER), Enterprise Ireland introduced Undertaking in Difficulty (UiD) assessments which delayed the announcement of Call 4 projects in 2022. The combination of these issues resulted in a lower than expected drawdown of expenditure in 2022.