As one of the largest and most prestigious European grant mechanisms, European Research Council (ERC) grants fund highly skilled and ambitious researchers to carry out frontier research over a period of five to six years. ERC grants are awarded after an extremely competitive review process, where excellent science is the sole criterion for success. With a budget of €16 billion from 2021 through to 2027 - 17% of the overall Horizon Europe budget - the ERC is world recognised as amongst the most powerful mechanisms in the support of blue-sky, investigator-driven research, fostering excellent science across all research domains. 

Embarking on the new year, it seems timely to reflect on the past 12 months. After the hectic and challenging ERC calendar of 2021, 2022 certainly presented with additional time-line pressures as Horizon Europe entered its second year. The first half of the year welcomed successful national results through the three main monobeneficiary calls from the 2021 work and indeed some great results through the Proof-of-Concept 2022 call, while the end of the year heralded the announcement of our first national success in a Synergy call in STEM as well as success through the 2022 Starting Grant call. These results bring our national tally in terms of awards (assuming all grant agreements will be successfully realised) to almost €47 million since the beginning of Horizon Europe. Huge congratulations to the successful awardees and indeed to the research support system that underpin these successes. 

Of course, while it is great to celebrate the projects that got over the funding line, we know too well that there are many more that don’t, some who will reapply again on the strength of advice from reviewers and others who will use the hard preparation learnings to restructure and apply for alternative funding. Also, we know that significant efforts are dedicated from year-to-year into developing the pipeline for future ERC success, from researchers to research support teams, and while this work is not tangible at the moment, we appreciate that this work is ongoing nationally and consistently. 

October of this year welcomed the European Research Council (ERCEA) visit to Ireland (UCD) for the very informative ERCEA PI Centric Event with Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis (Vice-President of the ERC Scientific Council) and several members of the ERCEA sharing their advice with our awardees and research supports on a variety of grant management topics; our sincere thanks to UCD for assisting us in organising this successful visit. Shortly after, Prof Maria Leptin (President of the ERC Scientific Council) visited Ireland and delivered a Keynote address on The impact of reforming research assessment to the Exploration and Transformation: The future of higher education on the island of Ireland conference at the RIA. To round off the year, Prof Luke O’Neill (TCD), was appointed by the European Commission as one of five new members of the governing body of the ERC, the Scientific Council. 

On December 19th, the ERCEA released information on important changes to the evaluation forms and processes for the 2024 calls, which you should become familiar with, more information can be found here.

Finally, in terms of updates, SFI launched the SFI Support Programme during 2022. The aims of the SFI ERC Support Programme, which is a rolling call, are:

 - To allow Irish institutions to recruit ERC-funded researchers from outside of Ireland;

 - To help recruited ERC awardees by providing excellent facilities and infrastructure; 

- To enhance the benefits of applying to ERC schemes for institutions and applicants; 

 - To increase, in the long term, the participation of Ireland-based researchers in all ERC schemes; 

 - To increase, in the long term, Ireland’s success rate across all ERC schemes.

The recruited awardee may have submitted their proposal to any panel within the three ERC domains. However, applications associated with ERC awardees whose funded research cannot clearly be shown to align with SFI’s legal remit will not be accepted. Further information can be found here.

A successful and busy ERC year over all and we look forward to more of the same in 2023. 

Nationally, we support prospective applicants in the form of Enterprise Ireland awards for ERC Support Preparation. We strongly recommend this highly supportive scheme for the preparation of what can be a quite onerous application process. Supports include but not exclusive to; teaching buy-out options, consultancy/professional services and research/administration supporting preliminary data gathering and proposal preparation. The maximum grant for Enterprise Ireland ERC Proposal Preparation Support is €16,000 (inclusive of VAT). Applications to Enterprise Ireland for ERC Proposal-Preparation-Support must be submitted no later than 6 months prior to the ERC Call closing date. Enterprise Ireland ERC Proposal Preparation Support was previously valid for 12 months from the date of submission of an application to Enterprise Ireland for support, but this has been increased to a 24-month duration on a pilot basis for applications received from 18 Jan 2023. 

As National Contact Points (NCPs) for the ERC, Dr Chiara Loda, (Irish University Association (IUA)) and Dr Maria Nash (Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and ERC National Delegate), we are here to support potential applicants and ERC national support structures. While Dr Loda is the NCP for the Social Sciences and Humanities domain and I am the NCP for both the Physical Sciences and Engineering domains, we welcome all queries across all domains and ERC stages through contact details found here. 

Wishing applicants every success across Horizon Europe in their future applications including ERC for 2023 and onwards,

Maria