In June 2006 a bid by the Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre involving TCD, RCSI and UCD and led by Professor Dermot Kelleher, succeeded in securing approximately €23 million from the Wellcome Trust and the Health Research Board for the Dublin Centre for Clinical Research (DCCR). The aim of the DCCR is to provide the infrastructure – physical space, facilities and trained staff – needed to support collaborative clinical research studies across Dublin. The Wellcome Trust will cover the construction and equipment costs of a new clinical research centre at St. James’ Hospital while the HRB will support the initial running costs of the CRC as well as the costs of the DCCR Clinical Research Network for a period of five years. The DCCR network includes clinical research activites undertaken at the RCSI CRC at Beaumont Hospital, the UCD CRC at the Mater Misericordae University Hospital and St. Vincent’s University Hospital, and the clinical research centre at St. James’s Hospital when completed.

The signing of the tripartite Wellcome Trust Agreement in December 2009 between Trinity College Dublin, St. James’s Hospital Board and the Wellcome Trust committed the Trust to fund the building and equipping of the CRC at St. James’s Hospital. At the end of June the HRB and TCD agreed a revised contract for the DCCR supporting the DCCR until December 2014. This revised contract provides for an independent Oversight Board that will monitor and report on the progress of the DCCR to TCD, Wellcome Trust and the HRB.