Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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868. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the new research proposals announcement apply to projects in the agricultural bioenergy field. [13137/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Investments in research under the FIRM, Stimulus and CoFoRD competitive funding programmes operated by my Department are primarily focused on areas prioritised under the National Research Prioritisation Exercise (NRPE), in particular 'Sustainable Food Production and Processing' and 'Food for Health'.

My Department’s 2014 competitive Call for Research proposals was launched on Tuesday 11^th March. The Call is broad in scope and covers areas such as animal and crop production, food processing and food product development and innovation. Topic E1.6 in the Section on ‘Supply Chain Sustainability and Competitiveness, Policy and Bioeconomy’ provides for a desk study aimed at identifying how and where Ireland can optimise its opportunities along the Bioeconomy value chain which includes the agricultural bioenergy field.

It may also be worth noting that, among the grant awards I announced last November arising from the Department’s 2013 Call, was an investment of €933,857 for research on short rotation forestry (SRF). The main purpose of this research, which will be conducted over a 4 year period, is to explore the potential of short rotation forestry to contribute to biomass production and renewable energy targets in Ireland. This builds on investments made by the Department on bioenergy under previous calls of the Stimulus programme. Details of all these are available on the Departments website at .