Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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336. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the amount of Exchequer funding expended on a project (details supplied); the details of the expenditure; and the number of staff directly or indirectly supported by the existence of this facility. [4275/18]

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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I-LOFAR is the national LOFAR astronomy consortium in Ireland (I-LOFAR Consortium). The Low Frequency Array Telescope (LOFAR) is a collection of radio antennas distributed across Europe controlled by super-computing facilities in the Netherlands in such a way that the entire network acts as a single instrument. LOFAR is a radio telescope working at the lowest frequencies accessible from Earth to observe the Universe in unprecedented detail. LOFAR is one of the largest astrophysics projects in Europe.

The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation funding agreement for I-LOFAR commits the Department to pay, subject to terms and conditions, the annual fee for the I-LOFAR consortium to be a member of the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT).

The agreement has been in effect from 1 July 2017 and will run until December 2021. Exchequer funding for I-LOFAR is exclusively spent on the membership fee.   Expenditure to date is €44,500 paid in 2017 for a half year membership.

The Department makes an annual payment to Trinity College Dublin as the coordinator of the I-LOFAR Consortium of an amount equivalent to the I-LOFAR Consortium’s annual contribution to the ILT. The I-LOFAR Consortium is comprised of research teams from Trinity College Dublin, Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, National University of Ireland Galway, University College Cork and Athlone Institute of Technology.

The I-LOFAR consortium is led by TCD which has signed a membership agreement with the ILT on behalf of the I-LOFAR consortium. No staff costs are funded either directly or indirectly from the exchequer for I-LOFAR.