I propose to take Questions Nos. 341, 342, 343, 344, 345 and 346 together.
The owner of the application referred to by the Deputy has been in correspondence with my Department, and has been referred to relevant funding sources, both for competitive research funding and potential enterprise supports.
Under the Research and Innovation Act 2024, Section 11, neither I nor my Department have any role concerning the assessment of any application, or the making of an award of funding, in any particular case or any direct role in evaluating research proposals. The publicly funded research bodies each have systems for evaluation in relation to different schemes of funding.
Criteria for individual funding calls is detailed on the Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland website. This process would be a peer reviewed evaluation in line with international best practice. Any application would need to meet the published criteria of a funding call, and provide the information required by the application in the approved format. It is therefore not possible to determine whether or not any application would be deemed eligible sight unseen, as funding calls each have specific parameters and requirements that would need to be met.
For the two questions where a large volume of data has been sought, this has been requested and will be provided to the Deputy in a follow up communication as soon as reasonably possible.
