Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

A wide range of questions have been asked. Horizon 2020 involves a co-decision procedure and will require the agreement of the European Parliament, the Commission and the member states.

I am presiding over the negotiations with our team in Brussels, through the permanent representation. Ours is a partial general approach, whereby the Council of Ministers has agreed a negotiating position relative to the European Parliament. There are certain areas of inflection, or certain challenges regarding the full cost model. We are trying to move towards a simplified procedure under which calls can be issued. The simpler the mechanism, the greater the access for individual researchers and research entities. There are other differences between the Council and the Parliament, for example, on the rules of participation.

We have gone through six trilogues, under which the three entities have tried to move on to the next stage. We are on trilogue No. 7 and will move towards trilogue No. 8 in the latter half of this week, if I am not mistaken. We hope to reach a final conclusion by the end of the Irish Presidency because we want to ensure a smooth transition between the seventh framework programme, FP7, and Horizon 2020 so that there can be clarity regarding the latter throughout the EU's research infrastructure, particularly in Ireland, and it can start seamlessly on 1 January 2014. We are still in the midst of the political negotiations with the other two institutions.

An additional €5 million was provided to the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, PRTLI, to allow for payments that would otherwise have been made in 2013. This allowed for a lower allocation in the overall budget cut. Some 18 capital projects are still progressing, as are 15 current projects. Eighteen current projects were originally targeted, but the 15 are delivering approximately the same outputs, namely, 339 PhDs as opposed to the original target of 342 PhDs.

Seven new Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, centres have been announced. Is Deputy Tóibín seeking clarity on these?