Governance fee
From September 1st 2025, a governance fee will be levied for a studies which are commercially supported e.g. pharmaceutical, devices companies. This fee you will be €8000. Studies in receipt of peer-review funding e.g. HRB, Wellcome Trust will attract a governance fee of €6000.
All investigator initiated studies without external support will not attract the governance fee.
The Research Directorate expects all research funding to be managed by the Finance Directorate of the HSE (Mid West).
Financial Management of Funding Grants in Medical Research
Financial management in a health research project involves budgeting, cost control, and ensuring the project’s financial sustainability through a system of financial planning, monitoring, and reporting. It is the responsibility of the Principal Investigator (PI) to ensure the management of the budget is compliant with HSE Financial Regulations (Appendix 1). The PI for the study being conducted will have designated Finance Management within its own directorate in order to provide guidance to support the PI in prioritising resources and achieve consensus on financial matters. All funding must be transferred to a HSE cost centre for transparency. Each directorate should have a designated cost centre for the purpose of where research funding will be transferred and managed through.
The key responsibilities for the PI include managing budgets and income, tracking expenses, forecasting financial needs, ensuring compliance with funder guidelines, and collaborating between finance, research, and service delivery teams. This ensures that funds are allocated efficiently to achieve the research goals while maintaining financial accountability.
In the event whereby a study is not completed, within the agreed timeframe of the budget and the budget does not match the output resource, the onus will be on the PI to ensure the allocated budget is managed to a high degree of care, foresight and risk awareness. For common mistakes like under-estimation of budget, unexpected costs or failure to meet the study with agreed timeframe, a financial contingency must be in place.
- Budgeting and forecasting: As part of the funding application, a detailed budget based on the forecasted expenditure of the study is submitted with forecasting future financial needs to guide resource allocation.
- Income and expense tracking: The PI is responsible for monitoring all financial transactions, from securing external research income to managing payments and monitoring outstanding invoices.
- Financial reporting: The finance department will support the PI in generating reports for internal boards and external funding bodies to show financial performance, audit purposes and ensure accountability.
- Compliance: Adhering to funder guidelines in line with the grant agreement and the HSE National Financial Regulations (Appendix 1).
- Collaboration: The PI should foster strong communication between the Research Directorate, Finance and service delivery teams to ensure realistic budgets and effective resource use.
Appendix 1
https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/finance/nfr/nfra.pdf
The financial advisor to the Research Directorate is joanne.mcnamara@hse.ie