Rose Conway-Walsh: Why Are Consultancy Limits Jumping to Millions?

I think it's important to point out how much Israel gets from the Horizon Fund for research and development, and that's not research and development for children's toys. There's no controls over what they get from Horizon Funding that should be going to other countries. In fact, twice or three times we wrote from the Finance Committee to get Ireland to stand up to stop Israel from accessing huge funding from the Horizon Fund, so there's so many contradictions in this space. I want to ask you around the consultancy part of it. So it's going from basically what can be done without prior government permission, it's going from 400,000 to 7.5 million, and in one instance from 800,000 to 15 million. They just seem like huge jumps for consultancy. And that says it's the aggregate amounts of grants to be provided, 7.5 million. So I suppose my question is why do they need to be that large? Over what period does the aggregate of funding cover? And yeah, basically those two. So the 7.5 million refers to technology acquisition, it's not for consultancy at all. Is it not? So it's on over consultancy grants. Consultancy grants essentially will be typically limited to the minimum state aid rules which are up to a maximum of 300,000 euro in terms of consultancy. So no company, because I think it's important to get this right, so no company can get any more than 300,000 for consultancy grants over what period? Yes. Over a yearly period it's limited by state aid rules. So they could get 300,000 every year? Every three years. Okay, so it's 100 every three years. Okay. And that consultancy, is there any restrictions over where that consultancy comes from, going to be globally? It has to be tender, like every consultancy has to be tender. So essentially as far as I pointed out for environmental aid, the transition that we have to make and really to support companies in the technologies that they can use to better reduce their carbon emissions, as well as looking at the digital transition which is very challenging for a lot of SMEs as you'll be aware, we're trying to work with, just like your local Leo has the Climate for Business Toolkit where your consultant comes in, they can look at energy efficiency methodologies, they can look at what is your online offering and recommend to that business exactly the pathway you should go down for investment. Bigger companies are no different, and medium-sized companies like Enterprise Ireland deal with are no different, that you can get good quality advice that will ensure the infrastructure, the investment you make goes into the right areas that will reduce your emissions and if it's on the digitalisation side, improve your revenue streams. And nobody has any problem with that. So in this bill as well, how is it, how is the impact of it going to be monitored and reported back so that we know that it's doing as you say what it's intended to do but there aren't unintended consequences from it? Both state agencies have very strong reporting requirements, obviously in their reports to me, their annual report and indeed their biannual report. Also we have very strong powers under the Act, if any state agency was engaging in activity that was not in line with our policy on neutrality or the government policy, we have the power to change that. Indeed they never have and essentially all the engagement that they have done is supporting Irish entities to grow and scale if they're Irish born and obviously attract inward investment and this is a key bill that will support them, be it assembling sites, our next generation sites that are going for the west of Ireland, this is a key vehicle to facilitate that, to allow the infrastructure and the partnerships with ISIF, the Irish Investment Fund, to work to deliver those at scale and it's a very important piece of legislation to support our state agencies and critically to ensure that companies are supported to make that transition and there's some very exciting examples across our indigenous economy that are investing quite significantly to go on a pathway to carbon neutrality but we have to ensure that they get that support at the start of the journey.