The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney and Enterprise Ireland have today launched two new programmes with funding of over €63m, focused on supporting Irish innovators and research.

The programmes are administered by Enterprise Ireland, and co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which aims to promote economic, social and territorial cohesion across all European regions. 

The Managing Authorities for the ERDF in Ireland are the Northern & Western Regional Assembly and the Southern Regional Assembly. 

Enterprise Ireland says the new €30M national initiative has the objective of developing a series of immersive, needs-led innovation training programmes.

These training programmes will aim to identify unmet market needs within specific sectors of growth in Ireland.

The Innovators’ Initiative programmes will be hosted in Irish publicly funded Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) – mainly third level institutions - or within a consortia of RPOs.

Applications are now being sought from publicly funded RPOs from areas of sectoral importance to Ireland. 

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney said, "These two new funding programmes, which are worth €63m combined, signal a major vote of confidence for both innovation and research in Ireland. We have a very strong and well-earned reputation for our capabilities in research, innovation and knowledge transfer, and this will enable us to build further on that success."

Head of Research and Innovation at Enterprise Ireland, Marina Donohue added, "The programmes will enable those active in this space to investigate, establish and develop new ideas. Both initiatives will accelerate the development of innovation capability in Irish enterprise across all regions and we look forward to supporting the projects involved."

Source: www.businessworld.ie