IDA Ireland RD&I Grant

IDA Ireland RD&I Grant

Funds companies investing in Ireland with support for collaborative innovation.

IDA Ireland's RD&I Grant is described by the agency as representing the largest proportion of IDA's grant funding programme. It funds qualifying research and development expenditure — both revenue and capital — at the Irish operations of multinational companies that are part of IDA Ireland's client portfolio. IDA Ireland's independent Board of Directors meets monthly to approve grants under EU General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) rules; following a rule change in January 2024, all grant agreements signed on or after that date operate under the updated GBER framework. IDA runs an approximately €100 million annual grant programme for investment projects across its full portfolio.

Eligibility is restricted to foreign-owned multinationals that have established or are expanding operations in Ireland — indigenous Irish companies are served by Enterprise Ireland, and academic researchers by Research Ireland. Grant intensity rates depend on company size and the R&D category under GBER. The canonical reference for eligible costs, intensity percentages, and scoring is the RDI Grant Application Guidelines document published in April 2024. Complementing the grant, Ireland's R&D tax credit stands at 30% on qualifying R&D expenditure following Finance Act 2024, increased from 25% for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2024.

There is no public application portal or published deadline. Multinationals initiate the process through their assigned IDA Project Executive, who guides the company through the application and the Board approval cycle. Claim forms — including Directors' Statements of Claim for capital and revenue expenditure, Form 4, and technical report templates — were updated in January 2024 for the new GBER rules, and only those post-January 2024 form sets should be used for current applications. Grant payment queries are handled at grantpayments@ida.ie.