James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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35. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if funding will be provided for Ireland to join CERN in order that significant commercial and research benefits can be obtained from membership of the organisation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22851/18]

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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Innovation 2020, the national strategy for research and innovation, recognises that in order for Ireland to become a Global Innovation Leader, our research and innovation system must be open with strong international collaboration links. Membership of leading International Research Organisations is an important mechanism for facilitating this engagement.

For this reason, the Government gave a commitment in Innovation 2020 to examine Ireland's membership options with a number of International Research Organisations including CERN and also the European Southern Observatory (ESO), ELIXIR and LOFAR.

Ireland joined ELIXIR, the life sciences data infrastructure organisation in 2016 and in 2017 my department funded Ireland's membership of the International LOFAR Radio Telescope. As announced in October 2017, Ireland is expected to join ESO later in 2018.

CERN is a leading global scientific collaboration investigating the fundamental composition of matter. It was established in 1952 and currently has 21 member states and co-operation agreements with approximately 40 other states. My Department has been assessing the case for membership of CERN.

Regrettably, in view of the intense demands on the capital programme and the tight fiscal constraints it will not be possible to progress membership of both CERN and the European Southern Observatory in 2018. As mentioned, Ireland will join ESO later this year and a capital allocation has been obtained specifically to ensure Ireland's membership. This will cost €0.75 million in 2018 and increase to approximately €3.5 million in 2019.

This decision to proceed to join ESO first reflects an assessment of the costs and benefits of each membership. ESO has been prioritised over CERN because of the large, established community of astronomy researchers in Ireland. Astronomy is an active area of research in each of our universities and several of our institutes of technology.

This community is well positioned to avail of the opportunities provided by ESO membership, thereby maximising the immediate benefit to Ireland.

These opportunities include participation in pioneering frontier research, access to cutting-edge technology, commercial opportunities for enterprise, the creation of human capital and skills and the further promotion of STEM subjects in Ireland.

In addition, the companies in Ireland that have had great success in securing contracts from the European Space Agency are well placed to bid for ESO contracts due to the overlap between the technologies used by ESO and ESA.

I fully recognise the value of membership of International Research Organisations (IROs) and my department has an on-going objective to increase Ireland's participation in IROs.

We will keep the issue of CERN membership under review and it is my hope that we may be in a position to progress CERN membership in the future, when the fiscal situation permits.