Find funding routes for your innovation plans.
IRDG helps members explore grants, EU programmes and the R&D Tax Credit, and prepare for discussions with the relevant agency or professional adviser.
Start with the project
Which of these sounds most like your situation?
Four starting points. Pick the one nearest your project — none of them is an eligibility decision, and the official source always controls.
We have done, or are doing, R&D and want to understand the tax position
Who it is forCompanies with qualifying scientific or technological work
Organise the project background, find the current Revenue guidance and prepare the questions for your adviser. The eligibility call belongs to a suitably qualified tax adviser.
We have a defined project and need development funding or a research partner
Who it is forCompanies leading a non-routine development project
Examine company-led R&D funding, an Irish research partnership or an all-island collaboration built around a defined project. Some supports require an application before work begins.
The project could suit an EU programme
Who it is forCompanies with an ambitious project, with or without international partners
Explore collaborative research, SME-led international development and support for individual innovative companies. Call fit, preparation time and — for collaborative routes — partners all matter from the start.
We are not sure where this fits
Who it is forMembers at any stage
Bring IRDG a high-level description of the outcome, the stage, the partners and the timing. We can help map the landscape and identify the conversation worth having first.
Prepare before the call
A useful first conversation starts with a clear project outline.
You do not need a finished application. You do need enough context for somebody to understand the work, its timing and the decision you need to make.
Keep the first enquiry high-level. Do not send tax records, personal data about other people, or confidential technical or commercial material.
- The business or technical outcome you are pursuing.
- Why the project is needed now — and what is new, difficult or uncertain.
- What has already started and what remains planned.
- The main work packages, decisions and expected outputs.
- The proposed team, research providers and international partners.
- Your organisation size and current agency relationship.
- An initial budget, major cost categories and cash-flow implications.
- Other public support received or being considered.
- The commercial or operational value if the project succeeds.
- Evidence already available: plans, tests, decisions, time or cost records.
- Any official deadline and the source page where you found it.
- The three questions you need an agency or adviser to answer.
How IRDG helps
IRDG helps you reach the right route, prepared.
We help you clarify the project, compare possible routes and prepare questions for the relevant agency or adviser. Eligibility, applications and claims remain with the responsible body and your qualified advisers.
Where the routes get discussed
Where the funding conversation happens each year.
Guidance on a page only goes so far. Twice a year the funding landscape comes into one room, and once a year the people who write and administer the R&D Tax Credit sit down with the companies claiming it.
National R&D Tax Policy Forum
A forum bringing Revenue, the Department of Finance and companies claiming the credit together. Administration, interpretation and what the scheme does and does not reach in practice — discussed with the people who set and apply the rules.
Innovation funding events — April and November
Twice a year IRDG brings the funding and support landscape into a single room: national and EU routes, the agencies that run them and the companies that have used them. Hundreds of companies attend. Free for members.
Clinics and briefings
Learn with people who do this work.
Booking opens on IRDG's events platform. For booking help or to discuss access requirements, contact IRDG before the event.
Member voices
The value we get from IRDG, across training, funding, networking, and policy, far outweighs any other membership. It just makes sense.
In practice
Members who used the funding guidance.
R&D Tax Credit clinics, grant navigation and collaborative funding routes, seen from the member side — including an earlier account of how one member planned its funding.
APC & VLE Therapeutics
Supporting APC's growth in biopharma process development.
CommScope
Expert support for tax, sustainability and innovation.
Fexco
Collaboration as a strategic building block, not only a source of funds.
Not sure where it fits?
Tell us about the project and we will map the routes.
Tell us the outcome you are pursuing, the stage the work is at, who else is involved and any deadline you are working to. We will help map the routes worth examining and point you at the right agency or adviser conversation.