Dr. Gerard Dooly:

Within our research group, we are primarily funded to investigate, say, sustainable development goals and benefit to communities. Much of our research would be habitat mapping with NPWS or BirdWatch Ireland, or even offshore energy mapping for birds off the shore or the coast. We do a lot of habitat enforcement and mapping in that sense. There are many uses for drones. When we look at investment in other countries, there is significant investment now going on and much of that would be in defence, but much of it is also in civilian use. When we see civilian developments in drones going on in other countries, it has benefits across many sectors. There are developments within civilian applications like these rolled out into developments and benefits for other sectors.