Mr. Terence Connolly:

The Horizon Europe grants for writing applications are approximately €12,500. That is usually outsourced. That is great for that one application but it means the knowledge is not retained in house. On project officers, the main ones are in Limerick, Cork and Dublin. Sligo also has a good one. Many of these staff are funded through the projects they apply for. Again, if the match funding element is missing, you are missing 20% of the funding but may as well be missing 100%. There really are small gaps that need to be plugged through match funding. That could allow capacity not only to be built, but retained, which is another issue. If you are funding staff through match funding, you will only have them for the duration of the project and, in some cases, you will only have 60% of the money to pay them. I hope that gives the committee some idea of the challenges and costs.