Professor Ronan McNulty:

Exactly. The Institute of Physics report includes a breakdown of those issues. The membership fee is linked to the GDP of the country. As such, it can fluctuate from year to year based on a complicated formula deriving from the previous three years data. Full membership would cost €13 million. However, one is allowed to be an associate member for any percentage of that above 10%. That is why I said "from". The minimum cost of entry is €1.3 million.

The only disadvantage to joining at a lower rate is that we would get fewer benefits. The return an associate member gets is capped at the amount it has paid. When a state joins as a full member, there is no cap. If Ireland joined at €1.3 million, our contracts would be capped at about a third of that. At what level we would join is really a question of policy. Indeed, there have been discussions between CERN and advisers here. There is a feeling that the 10% level might be too low and we might wish to join at 20% or 30%. We would have to look at where we could avail of the contracts and where the opportunities are and then join at an appropriate level. The fact that we would not be locked into anything would mean that we could scale up or down if desired, provided our contribution was above 10%.