Research funds can be received from a variety of sources; from national (e.g. the HRB) or international
funders (e.g. the EU Commission), to commercial funding (i.e. pharmaceutical funding of clinical trials).
Currently there are no formal institutional practices to regulate applications for external funding or indeed
to manage the award once it is received.
In general, the normal practices and rules that apply to the management of recurring annual HSE division
budgets, make the management of research funds very difficult due to the multi-annual nature of the
budgets and the impact of additional income on institutional balance sheets at year-end. This generally
results in one of two scenarios:
a) Healthcare organisations manage research funding via an external agency; a foundation or university.
b) Healthcare organisations receive the award (e.g. EU awards) and make local ad hoc arrangements to
enable the management of the funds.
The lack of agreed governance structures for research finance currently represents a significant missed opportunity for the health service organisations to benefit from
funding, for example:
a) The HRB does not consider the HSE or associated hospitals to be suitable host institutions capable
of managing research awards. As a result, HSE staff members are not able to apply for HRB funding
unless they are affiliated with a university so that the funds can be channelled via the third level
institution.
b) Clinical research projects could represent a significant source of income but there are no agreed formal
arrangements in place to recoup costs, nor agreements with universities to facilitate the sharing of
overhead income.
c) The lack of an agreed costing template for costs associated with the running of clinical trials may result
in under-budgeting, and projects being subsidised “in kind” by health care organisations (i.e. staff time,
etc.), which represents a financial loss and it also erodes the
capacity of the health sector to negotiate effectively with pharmaceutical companies.
d) The ability to receive research funding is essential to enable capacity building and the lack of support
mechanisms hinders the availability of opportunities in this regard.
The financial advisor to the Research Directorate is joanne.mcnamara@hse.ie