Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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128. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the total allocation and final expenditure on each Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland technology centre in each year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55506/21]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Technology Centre programme is a joint initiative between Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, which allows Irish companies and multinationals to work together on market focused strategic R&D projects in collaboration with research institutions. Technology Centres are collaborative entities established and led by industry. Participating companies propose areas and themes of greatest relevance to them over a 3-5 year period and co-fund part of the research. In response, the researchers develop solutions that respond to these needs.

There are currently eight Technology Centres in the programme, resourced by highly-qualified researchers who provide a unique ecosystem for collaboration in areas identified by industry as being strategically important.

Over 300 member companies collaborate with the Technology Centres in the areas of analytics, dairy processing, food for health, learning technologies, manufacturing, materials, meat technology, microelectronics and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Technology Centres' supports achieve economies of scale by addressing sector wide problems or opportunities in order to achieve uplift for groups of companies via individual investments. This initiative allows industry groups to set a commercially valuable research agenda which academic researchers in the Technology Centre will deliver on. This programme is Ireland’s largest initiative to support industry-led research, development and innovation. In partnership with their member companies these Centres focus on identifying new sources of industrial growth and job creation and achieving competitive advantage for industry in Ireland by accessing and leveraging the innovative capacity of the Irish research community.

Each Centre is approved funding for a 5 year period based on a Business Plan submission which is evaluated both internally and by external international domain experts. For every one euro the State invests in Technology Centres, there is a 6-20 fold return on investment.

The following funding approvals have been made in respect of the current Technology Centres.

- MTI - €8.1m funded for Phase 1

- CeADAR - €12m funded for Phase 2

- DPTC - €14m funded for Phase 2

- IMR - €23.5m funded for Phase 2

- PMTC - €5m funded for Phase 2

- Learnovate – €7.4m for Phase 2

- FHI - €7.2m funded for Phase 3

- MCCI - €10m funded for Phase 3

The following table shows the core funding paid to the individual Centres in 2020. A schedule of funding for 2017-2019 inclusive is provided in the link.

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