Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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279. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the stage of the DTIF fund process; the number of expressions of interest that did not have success in the eligibility criterion; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50551/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Department launched the first call of the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund on 29 June 2018 and Expressions of Interest were sought by the deadline of 3pm on Friday, 17 August 2018. Information on the Fund and how to apply was provided by the Department with the support of Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland. Expressions of Interest were sought for funding commencing in 2019. Subsequent calls will be announced in due course.

The Department received over 300 Expressions of Interest for this Call for funding. Decisions on the Expressions of Interest received were made in September 2018 and were communicated to the lead partners of all consortia. Only those applicants that met all of the eligibility criteria and met the minimum threshold of the selection criteria were invited to submit a full application. Projects that are deemed ineligible for this first call under the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) may still apply in subsequent calls.

45 consortia were invited to submit a full application to be received by 12.00 noon on 5th November. Since that date, a panel of international experts has been assessing the detailed applications and interviewing each consortium that submitted a valid application.

The DTIF Advisory Board has met in recent days to review the outcome of the international assessment of proposals and the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation will be provided with the recommendations of the Advisory Board in the near future. The Minister expects to make an announcement about the first tranche of projects to receive an offer of DTIF funding later in December.