Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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292. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if she had any formal engagement with the scientific community, particularly with SFI, on the potential ramifications of Brexit for co-operation between individual researchers and research entities, HEIs or SFI funded centres, that co-operate on projects between Northern Ireland and here under the North-South research supplement. [7712/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is engaging intensively with all agencies of her Department including Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and with the research community generally on the possible implications of Brexit for research and innovation in Ireland. As part of the Government’s ongoing consultation work on Brexit, a series of dialogues with civic society is taking place and the research community is participating actively in these events. The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation hosted a Brexit Stakeholder dialogue in Carrick on Shannon on 30 January 2017 which was attended by a wide range of stakeholders including strong representation by the higher education sector and by a broad spectrum of enterprises and enterprise representative groups. The Director General of Science Foundation Ireland and the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, Prof. Mark Ferguson participated on the one of the panels at this event and addressed a number of key issues for research and innovation associated with Brexit.

SFI has a number of bilateral and tri-lateral programmes to encourage North/South collaborations between both academic and enterprise sector researchers. These bi/tri-lateral arrangements including the US-Ireland R&D Partnership, SFI's Investigators Programme and the US-Ireland Centre to Centre Programmes are not impacted by Brexit. SFI will continue to work with authorities in Northern Ireland to identify opportunities to strengthen and build on these collaborations which will benefits researchers in Ireland and Northern Ireland irrespective of post-Brexit scenarios.