--- title: "Enterprise Ireland Agile Innovation Fund" canonical: https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-agile-innovation-fund type: FundingScheme provider: Digital Bridge providerType: AI Systems Integration & Applied AI Engineering Firm areaServed: IE priceRange: EUR 1,200-100000+ language: en-IE dateModified: 2026-09-18 grantEligible: [EI Digital Discovery, EI Digital Process Innovation, LEO Grow Digital] htmlVersion: https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-agile-innovation-fund license: cite-with-attribution --- # Enterprise Ireland Agile Innovation Fund ## Answer summary The Agile Innovation Fund provides up to 50% support for fast-moving research and development projects, using a rapid online application designed to give a decision in weeks rather than months. It suits companies in sectors where the product cycle is short and a conventional R&D fund timeline would make the project pointless. ## What this scheme funds Up to 50% R&D support with a fast-track decision for short-cycle innovation projects. - R&D salaries and overheads on the project - Materials and prototyping - Subcontracted research within limits - Capital directly required by the project in some cases ## What it does not fund These costs are routinely ruled ineligible under this scheme. - Business-as-usual product maintenance - Work with no technical novelty - Costs incurred before approval ## Who is eligible Eligibility is decided by Enterprise Ireland, not by Digital Bridge. - Enterprise Ireland client company - A clearly defined R&D project with technical challenge - Capacity to co-fund the balance ## How to apply Typical end-to-end timeline: Designed to be faster than the standard R&D Fund — typically weeks to a decision on a complete application. - Discuss the project with your development adviser - Complete the streamlined online application - Provide the technical and commercial case - Await written approval before starting ## Evidence you will need Applications are usually delayed by missing paperwork rather than by weak projects. - Technical description of the challenge and the intended advance - Project plan with work packages and costs - Company financials ## Why applications get rejected The recurring reasons assessors give under this scheme. - No technical advance beyond current practice - Project already under way - Costs not broken down by work package ## What Digital Bridge delivers under this scheme Illustrative net cost applies the published rate (Up to 50% of eligible project cost) to our published engagement bands. It is arithmetic, not an offer of funding. - AI agent and workflow engineering as a subcontracted work package — list a fixed quote, illustrative net cost ≈ 50% of the approved eligible portion, if the subcontract is accepted ## Who decides this grant, and what we are responsible for Enterprise Ireland decides eligibility, approval and payment under this scheme. Digital Bridge supplies the work and the documentation an assessor asks for from the supplier side. - Digital Bridge does not administer, assess, approve, pay or appeal any grant. Every decision is made by the funding body named on the scheme, under its own published rules. - This section is general information, not financial, tax, legal or grant-writing advice. It is not an application, a pre-approval, or any form of assurance that you will be funded. - Scheme rates, ceilings and eligibility change without notice and several supports are administered locally, so your Local Enterprise Office or agency may apply different rules to the ones published here. Confirm everything with the funder in writing before you commit. - Our questionnaire is a deterministic guide based only on the answers you give. It cannot see your accounts, your sector classification, your state-aid position or your previous awards, so it can suggest a scheme you are ultimately found ineligible for. - If an application is refused, delayed, reduced or clawed back, our fees for work you have instructed remain payable. We recommend you do not instruct chargeable work until your funder confirms in writing what it will support. - Costs incurred before a funder receives your application are almost always ineligible. Timing is your responsibility, and we will always tell you when we think you should wait. ## How the Agile Innovation Fund works in practice The Agile Innovation Fund exists because Enterprise Ireland's standard R&D approval cycle is too slow for fast-moving projects. It offers a rapid decision on smaller research and development projects, with an online application and a compressed assessment. Speed is the whole proposition, and it comes with a trade-off: the project has to be well defined before you apply, because there is little room to develop the proposal during assessment. Eligibility follows Enterprise Ireland's client base and sector focus rather than being open to all businesses, and the work must be genuine R&D with technical uncertainty at its core. Product refreshes and system upgrades are not what this fund is for. ## What we do as the supplier on the quote For an agile application the technical narrative has to be tight, and tight is harder than long. We help articulate the uncertainty — what is not currently known, why the answer cannot be looked up, what would count as resolving it — and cost the work against a realistic timeline rather than an optimistic one. Compressed assessment rewards proposals that are already thought through, and it punishes vagueness quickly. Where the work is really implementation with a research label attached, we say so, because a refused application also costs the company its place in the queue. ## Where do Agile Innovation applications go wrong? The Agile route exists for fast-turnaround innovation projects, and its advantage is a shorter decision process. That advantage disappears if the application is not genuinely ready. The recurring failure is a project described in aspirational terms — "develop an AI capability" — where the assessor needs a technical question, a method, a timeline and a definition of what success looks like. There must also be real technical uncertainty. Work that is well understood and simply new to your company is development, not innovation, and it is assessed as such. Finally, the pace of the scheme assumes you can start quickly; applying while still choosing a partner or waiting on a board decision usually means the funded window is half spent before work begins. ## How is this different from the main R&D Fund? Scale and speed. Agile Innovation is aimed at smaller, faster projects with a lighter application. Larger multi-year programmes go through the standard R&D Fund. ## How fast is the decision in practice? The fund is designed for a materially faster turnaround than standard R&D funding, but published timelines assume a complete, well-specified application. Incomplete submissions lose the speed advantage immediately, so preparation time is not saved, only shifted earlier. ## Source and last review Scheme parameters checked against Enterprise Ireland — Agile Innovation Fund (https://www.enterprise-ireland.com/en/supports) on 2026-08-21. Reviewed quarterly. Next scheduled review: November 2026. Digital Bridge is a supplier, not the awarding body. Eligibility, approval and payment are decided solely by the funding body named on each scheme. Figures below are the published scheme parameters as at the review date shown, and net costs are arithmetic illustrations of the published rate applied to our published prices. Always confirm current rules with the funder before you commit to any spend, because expenditure incurred before an application is received is almost always ineligible. ## Who suits the Agile Innovation Fund over the standard R&D Fund? This fund is built for Enterprise Ireland client companies with a defined, time-critical research and development project in a sector where product cycles move fast enough that a standard R&D Fund timeline would make the project pointless by the time it was approved. It supports up to 50% of eligible cost on projects up to roughly a fixed quote in total, covering R&D salaries, overheads, materials, prototyping and some subcontracted research. It does not suit business-as-usual product maintenance or work with no genuine technical challenge. Applications most commonly stall for one of two reasons: the project has already started before approval, which makes the spend retrospective and ineligible, or the online application fails to show a technical advance beyond current practice, reading instead as ordinary product development. Prepare a technical description of the challenge and the intended advance, a project plan broken into work packages with costs against each, and current company financials before you apply. Speed is the scheme's selling point, but only for a complete, well-evidenced application; incomplete submissions do not move faster for being urgent. ## Where does AI development work fit as a work package? Where an AI agent or workflow engineering component forms part of a wider R&D project, it can be scoped as a subcontracted work package within the application, typically in the a fixed quote to a fixed quote range depending on complexity, alongside the company's own R&D activity. The key is presenting it as one clearly bounded package with its own deliverables and cost, not folded into a general software line, since assessors evaluate cost lines individually and a vague subcontract line is harder to approve. We would provide a fixed-scope quotation for that specific package, stating what technical uncertainty it resolves, so it reads consistently with the rest of the R&D case rather than as an unrelated purchase. Whether that subcontracted portion is accepted, and at what rate, is entirely a decision for Enterprise Ireland's assessors, and the approved eligible portion — not the full quote — is what any support is calculated against. Confirm current fund parameters and eligibility with your development adviser before committing to a scope, since nothing in this project's material is a guarantee that a given work package will be approved. ## How we decide what to quote for Ei Agile Innovation Fund Digital Bridge delivers this work from Gorey Business Park in County Wexford on a fixed written scope — one price, one delivery date — and the client owns the finished work outright. The Agile Innovation Fund provides up to 50% support for fast-moving research and development projects, using a rapid online application designed to give a decision in weeks rather than months. Before a figure is given, four questions are answered in order, and a named person signs the scope off — it is never generated automatically. - Is this the right job at all? We look at what you already have online, whether the domain and Google Business Profile are in your own name, and what Ei Agile Innovation Fund customers currently ask you for. If a repair or a single page would solve it, we quote that instead. - What does the work have to achieve first? The scope is written around one outcome — enquiries, bookings, orders or credibility — and anything else is listed as optional so it can be dropped without renegotiating. - What will it cost and when will it be live? Page count, content readiness, integrations and whether photography or copy still has to be produced set the price and the date, both fixed in writing before work starts. - How will people in Ei Agile Innovation Fund find it afterwards? Local search setup is included in a build; ongoing SEO is a separate optional retainer you can start or stop with notice. ## Checkable facts behind this Ei Agile Innovation Fund page Author and reviewer: Joey Bray, founder of Digital Bridge, building and maintaining Irish business websites since 2016. Studio address: Gorey Business Park, Gorey, Co. Wexford. Phone: 085 224 1848. Every claim below can be checked before you speak to us. - Published starting prices, not estimates released after a sales call — see the pricing page for the full ladder. - Live client sites you can open and test yourself are listed in the work section. - One contact from first call to launch, rather than an account handler relaying messages. - A plain-text mirror of this page is published for AI assistants at the same path with a .md extension. ## Helpful links and official sources for Ei Agile Innovation Fund Primary sources you can check yourself. We link the publisher rather than a summary of it. - EU Artificial Intelligence Act, regulatory framework — European Commission — https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai - Data Protection Commission, guidance for organisations — https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/organisations - AI Risk Management Framework — NIST — https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework - Local Enterprise Office business supports — https://www.localenterprise.ie/Discover-Business-Supports/ - Cybersecurity guidance for SMEs — ENISA — https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/cybersecurity-education/smes ## What this costs | Engagement | From | Typical grant route | |---|---|---| | AI Feasibility & Readiness Assessment | from €5,000 | Eligible for the Enterprise Ireland Digital Discovery Grant at up to 80% funding, subject to Enterprise Ireland approval and company eligibility | | Baseline production build | from €15,000 | Not typically grant-funded | | Multi-system agent workflows | €25,000 to €60,000 | Not typically grant-funded | | Enterprise / multi-department programme | €40,000 to €100,000+ | Not typically grant-funded | | Managed operation & optimisation | from €149/month | Not typically grant-funded | | Brochure / Presence | from €1,200 | Not typically grant-funded | | Growth | from €2,500 | Not typically grant-funded | | Authority | from €4,250 | Not typically grant-funded | | E-commerce & custom platform | from €6,000 | Not typically grant-funded | All figures are ex-VAT and fixed against a signed scope. Grant outcomes are decided by the funder, not by Digital Bridge. ## Grant data currency Digital Bridge is a supplier, not the awarding body. Eligibility, approval and payment are decided solely by the funding body named on each scheme. Figures below are the published scheme parameters as at the review date shown, and net costs are arithmetic illustrations of the published rate applied to our published prices. Always confirm current rules with the funder before you commit to any spend, because expenditure incurred before an application is received is almost always ineligible. Last reviewed against the funder's published terms: 2026-08-18. ## Evidence - Verdé Environmental Group — 24/7 AI incident triage with severity classification, Eircode geolocation and four-depot dispatch routing → https://digitalbridge.ie/industries - tools.digitalbridge.ie — 50+ shipped production tools, including the Website Worth Index and the DigitalBridge Authority Score - Printhouse — custom web-to-print platform with 29+ product pages → https://printhouse.ie ## How delivery is de-risked - Seven-day shadow-mode pilot before any system takes live traffic. - Full source-code and prompt ownership transfers on final payment. - EU-hosted infrastructure, provider training disabled, signed data processing agreement. - Fixed price against a signed scope — no hourly meter and no open-ended exposure. ## FAQ ### How is this different from the main R&D Fund? Scale and speed. Agile Innovation is aimed at smaller, faster projects with a lighter application. Larger multi-year programmes go through the standard R&D Fund. ### How much does an AI integration project cost in Ireland? Digital Bridge scopes AI integration after reviewing the workflow, systems, data, governance and operating responsibility involved. A tailored written proposal is provided after discovery rather than a standard published figure. ### How long does a production AI build take? A feasibility assessment runs three to five weeks. A baseline production build typically runs eight to twelve weeks from signed scope to go-live, including a seven-day shadow-mode pilot before the system takes live traffic. Multi-system programmes are sequenced into phases so value lands before the full programme completes. ### Can Irish grant funding cover this work? Often, yes. Enterprise Ireland's Digital Discovery Grant funds up to 80% of an eligible feasibility assessment, and Digital Process Innovation funds up to 50% of eligible implementation costs. Local Enterprise Office schemes cover smaller digital projects. Eligibility is decided by the funder, never by us. ## Related pages - [All Irish AI grants compared](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland) - [AI agent and workflow engineering as a subcontracted work package](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-integration-pricing#agent-workflows) - [AI project scoping](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-integration-pricing) - [AI integration services](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-integration) - [Enterprise Ireland Digital Discovery Grant](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-digital-discovery-grant) - [Enterprise Ireland Digital Transition Fund](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-digital-transition-fund) - [Enterprise Ireland GreenStart](https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-greenstart) ## Contact Digital Bridge, Gorey Business Park, Gorey, Co. Wexford, Ireland. Phone: +353 85 224 1848. Email: info@digitalbridge.ie. Engineering lead: Joey Bray, Founder & Principal Engineer. Last updated: 2026-09-18 HTML version of this page: https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland/ei-agile-innovation-fund