Mr. Terence Connolly:

On state aid, unfortunately schemes do design the questions in the application form to try to answer the stated questions as naturally as possible but in a lot of cases, it is a requirement by the Commission. Other member states are running into the same problems. They have to ask very complex questions but the decision is almost a process. It is not a "Yes" or "No" answer, which makes it all very complicated. Supports are being provided but there is an issue with the level at which the state aid complexity can be answered. Maybe that is one thing we should not let the Commission off the hook on. There is a responsibility at EU level to try to simplify this because it goes across all programmes. In Horizon Europe it is simplified because the Commission gives out the money directly so it is not seen as state aid and covers research. However, because our funds are co-funded, there is a national element and it becomes a very different beast when these requirements kick in. It is something that needs a focus on it to try to answer this because it is becoming a problem for a lot of smaller scale applicants.

On de minimis, it is still there. Hopefully, the threshold will be increasing from next January. Even when the threshold increases, we are looking at €300,000 over three years. If an organisation is small, it is kind of cutting itself off from other funding. Unless it is picking the right funding for that €300,000 for three years to come from, it is not ideal. How much can an organisation realistically do with that much money? If a lot of it is going towards staff costs and things like that, organisations will sometimes end up with quite a small amount for the activity. It particularly on SMEs. Much of the funding for SMEs is done through de minimisfor that very reason, because of the complexity. Somehow we are not targeting them. There are SMEs and large companies in Ireland. We have this problem with the missing middle of lots of healthy middle-sized companies or companies that were SMEs and grew into big companies. I wonder if there is a link with that complexity around state aid. Maybe because of that, we are not able to target companies that are not big enough to be super rich but are not small enough to benefit from the funding.