evidence: The EU budget is complementary to Ireland’s national budget and comes into play when it is more effective to spend money at the EU level than at the local, regional or national level. In 2019, Ireland contributed €2.3 billion of the total EU revenue of €165 billion or about 0.7% of the Irish economy. [...] The second largest share of Ireland’s EU funding goes to growth and jobs, including research and innovation. For example, an EU funded project hosted at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) has discovered new ways to improve vision using key nutrients found in fruit and vegetables, which is good news for patients in the early stages of age-related macular degeneration. [...] - A proportion of each country’s gross national income (GNI) in line with how wealthy they are - Customs duties on imports from outside the EU - An amount based on the value added tax collected by each EU country - From 2021, a contribution based on the amount of non-recycled plastic packaging waste in each country - Other revenue, including contributions from non-EU countries to certain programmes, interest on late payments and fines, as well as surplus from the previous year - To finance NextGenerationEU, the European Commission will raise funds on the capital markets which will be repaid over a long-time horizon until 2058