Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The recently announced Competence Centre initiative is one of a number of key initiatives emanating from the Government's Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006 — 2013 (SSTI).

Competence Centres will be collaborative entities established and led by industry in Ireland and resourced by highly-qualified researchers associated with research institutions that are empowered to undertake market focussed strategic R&D for the benefit of industry. A Competence Centre is established when a group of companies come together to define their common research interest and can demonstrate the strategic impact of a Competence Centre on their business area.

The objective of this initiative is to achieve competitive advantage for industry in Ireland by accessing the innovative capacity of the research community. These industry led centres will be important in translating advanced research into commercial technology. The Strategy foresees significant expenditure on new Competence Centres, estimated to be in the range of €1million to €2 million annually per centre, in order to build more appropriate infrastructure to better support industry led research.

There are clear benefits in bringing together companies that have similar research problems and teaming them with highly-qualified researchers to produce new technologies. Through their collaborative research, Competence Centres will break through the technology barriers, bring their results to market and deliver a competitive advantage to Irish industry. Not only will the companies participating in these centres benefit from the shared intellectual property and research produced, but Ireland's economy will benefit in terms of knowledge generated and retained in this country, knowledge that currently is generated overseas.

Technology Ireland, one of the SSTI implementing bodies, has overseen the design of the Competence Centres programme and both Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland have been assigned responsibility for its delivery. A call for Expressions of Interest from industry issued from both agencies in March of this year. Subsequently 25 expressions of interest from diverse industry groupings were received by the closure of the initial call in May. These applications are currently being assessed by both agencies involved.

The first call for Expressions of Interest indicated that approximately 5 centres could be funded in the first round, subject to successful evaluation for quality of proposal, value for money and strategic relevance. The programme will continue to invite further expressions of interest and further centres will be funded subject to successful evaluation. It is not possible to predict at this early stage how many Competence Centres will be open by 2012.