Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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644. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he is confident the State is investing enough on resource-intensive data and computing power to help the research and academic community build and understand AI. [7703/24]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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My Department currently provides data and computing power to the research and academic community across many fields by funding the Irish Centre for High-End Computing as well as research and education bodies with their own computing facilities, and through membership of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking.

The Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) provides high-performance computing (HPC) resources and expertise to all researchers based in Irish third-level institutions, including for artificial intelligence applications. Their services are also available to users in industry and the public sector. Across 2023 and 2024 the Department has allocated a total of €3.2 million on top of existing baseline funding for ICHEC to support the ongoing provision of these resources.

My Department also facilitates researchers’ access to resource-intensive data and computing resources through membership of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC). With Participating States EuroHPC operates a network of world-class supercomputing facilities across Europe. Researchers from academia, research institutes, public authorities and industry based in Ireland are eligible to apply for time on these machines, including for work on artificial intelligence.

Specifically on the subject of artificial intelligence, my Department is currently working with European partners to amend the EuroHPC regulation. The proposed amendment would make supporting European leadership in trustworthy artificial intelligence a key objective of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, including through infrastructural and training supports.