Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Call number seven on this was announced as a rolling call. That means applications can come in at any stage up until the closing date of April of next year. We did that for the reason of developing a pipeline of applications that would allow companies more time to meet with possible partners to explore the potential for submitting projects. There is a lot of work involved in this from applicants' perspective and we do not want to put them under pressure to hit a specific deadline. That is why we have it as a rolling deadline. To the Deputy's point, to make sure that we draw it down, my Department has asked Enterprise Ireland to exploit its company databases and sector experts, and to engage with other enterprise agencies and research bodies to identify potential companies and research institutions that could form a pipeline of future applications. Development advisers and Enterprise Ireland are now encouraged to engage directly with clients for that reason. My Department is also conducting a stakeholder consultation exercise to obtain perspectives and recommendations to see whether we need to in any way make adjustments to that application process.

It is €42 million for the year. Quite a lot of that, €32 million, has already been used. It is primarily around contracts. Approximately 50% of this fund so far has been used for life sciences and healthcare projects. For the rest, we are prioritising, for example, AI and engineering. Many of these projects are already happening throughout the country. I visited one in UCD just a week or two ago, where fantastic work is going on in the space sector and with Debra Ireland. On top of that, regarding the overall award of €371 million in funding, 104 calls for the disruptive technologies innovation fund have already come in under the first six calls. We are on the seventh rolling call but we have already administered €371 million to date from the first six.