Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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184. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if his Department will engage with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science regarding funding for a new national supercomputer; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23587/24]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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High-performance computing and the infrastructures that support this are important enablers of innovation, digital transformation and enterprise development in Ireland.

Policy responsibility for the area of high-performance computing (HPC) falls under the remit of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS).

The former national high-performance computer – Kay – was hosted by the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), under the auspices of the University of Galway. It reached its end of life in November 2023.

DFHERIS has been in consultation with my Department as it developed an interim service using existing EU supercomputers for a fixed period until a long-term sustainable model of HPC provision in Ireland can be agreed.

An interim solution is currently in place allowing Irish researchers to use a range of other EU supercomputers available to them on a competitive basis, due to Ireland’s membership of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU).

As planned, migration of researchers and the national HPC service projects from Kay to the interim service, MeluXina, in Luxembourg, began in December 2023 and was concluded in April this year. Preparations are underway to fully decommission the compute component of Kay at the end of June.

Before Kay can be replaced, DFHERIS has this year initiated an independent review of national HPC requirements in Ireland to inform any decision, due to the significant additional capital investment potentially involved.

HPC, such as that available across the EU under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and proposed in the Computational Analysis and Simulation Platform for Ireland (CASPIr) project, will be considered in my Department's discussions with colleagues in that Department as they undertake this work.