capacity in Ireland’s regions

Strategic Goal 3:

Smart Specialisation will improve research and innovation capacity in Ireland’s regions

Summary

Strategic Goal 3 of Ireland’s Smart Specialisation Strategy aims to increase the intensity of business R&D across all regions, through the delivery of new and enhanced agency interventions, especially those focused on strengthening industry-academic collaboration.

Enabled by Ireland’s two ERDF regional programmes a range of new and extended schemes are specifically targeting increased industry-academic collaboration and boosting potential for innovation and commercialisation across Irish regions. This is supported by the ongoing work of our enterprise agencies promoting RD&I supports at the firm level.

Business Expenditure on Research and Development (BERD) continues to grow

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) BERD Survey is a targeted survey issued to all enterprises actively engaged in R&D across all business sectors of the economy. The most recent BERD for 2021 to 2022 was released on 4 May 2023. It showed actual R&D expenditure across Ireland in 2021 (€3.88 billion) was 19% higher when compared with 2019 (€3.26 billion). IDA Ireland, for example, is on track to deliver 170 additional RD&I investments, and cumulative RD&I investment of €3.8 billion, by client companies in the period 2021-2024. EI has ambitious goals of ensuring enterprise expenditure on R&D to reach 300 R&D projects of over €100,000 supported and to improve productivity with 2.5% annually.

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Box 1 Regional Business Expenditure on Research and Development

• Total R&D spending in the Eastern and Midland Region amounted to €2.49 billion in 2021, accounting for 64.3% of all R&D expenditure. • The Southern Region accounted for €1.05 billion or 27.0%, and the Northern and Western Region accounted for €338.1 million or 8.7%. • In the Northern and Western Region, current expenditure accounted for 95.9% of all R&D expenditure, compared with 91.7% for the Southern Region and 86.4% for the Eastern and Midland Region.

Building Technological University capacity to engage with industry – TU RISE

The ERDF funded TU RISE scheme assists higher education institutions (HEIs) in the technological sector to build and increase research capacity and human capital with a focus on enhancing engagement with regional enterprises. By February 2024, nearly €84 million was competitively awarded to eligible HEIs across Ireland.

Of this, €20 million has been provided to the Atlantic Technological University in the NWR. This funding will be used to support 60 PhD scholarships across five cohorts of 12 PhD studentships, with each cohort collaborating with at least one enterprise in the region. Studentships supported under this

TU RISE project will create a pool of highly skilled researchers in the NWR, while serving as a bridge between academia and regional enterprise across key sectors including Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering; AgriFood and AgriTech; Audiovisual/Creative; ICT and ICT Services; Life Sciences, MedTech and Medical Devices; Marine and Blue Economy; Renewable Energy, Climate Change Mitigation and Sustainability.

KT Boost driving research commercialisation in the regions

Launched in December 2023 with the support of ERDF funding, KT Boost provides resources and support to Innovation Offices/Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in HEIs across Ireland, to drive knowledge and technology transfer to industry, and the creation of spin-out companies from academic research.

KT Boost funds recruitment, skillset development and training within Innovation Offices to ensure HEIs have the right people with the right skills to propel research commercialisation in HEIs. The activities supported under KT Boost will lead to enhanced SME engagement and commercialisation intensity at regional level. The Programme is expected to accelerate the rate of high potential start-up (HPSU) companies evolving from research spin-outs while also increasing the volume of intellectual property (IP) licences and research collaboration agreements for these companies.

KT Boost is managed by Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI), on behalf of Enterprise Ireland. The total budget for supports available for the four-year programme is €33.4 million, of which €5.34 million is for beneficiaries located in the NWR.

Regionally distributed EI Technology Centres and Research Ireland Research Centres driving industry-academic collaborations

The Technology Centres programme administered by EI is well placed to support Smart Specialisation. Currently, nine Technology Centres with strong sectoral and regional focus are located around Ireland and are resourced by highly qualified researchers who provide a unique ecosystem for academic-industry collaboration that is determined by industry. Technology Centres are important actors in helping businesses to embark on an innovation journey that can boost enterprise resilience and open new opportunities for business growth and productivity. They are also important players in promoting innovation diffusion through the membership networks they build and the collaborative research that they foster both within and outside their immediate regional location.

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Box 2 Construct Innovate – Ireland’s newest Technology Centre

Construct Innovate is an industry-led research centre involving the academic consortium of University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, the Irish Green Building Council, and the host institution, University of Galway. It is the newest of nine centres in EI’s industry-led Technology Centre network and the Centre’s vision is to make Ireland a global research and innovation leader for sustainable construction and built environment technology.

The Centre brings together 23 multidisciplinary research groups with over 300 researchers across the partner institutions. The Centre’s research expertise includes digital adoption; modern methods of construction (MMC); sustainability; productivity, affordability and cost; skills and training; and collaboration.

Construct Innovate accelerates innovation in construction and the built environment by bringing together the whole value chain. With active engagement with its members, partners, plus a European network of innovation clusters, its immediate focus is to address industry challenges in the area of residential construction.

Research Ireland Centres are regional networks of universities which engage with companies across regions in Ireland, aligned with areas of regional strength as defined in the Smart Specialisation

Strategy. The Centres are delivering systemic impact, providing talent and innovative solutions to Ireland’s economic, societal and environmental challenges in important sectoral areas including manufacture of medical devices, photonic integration science and technology, and developing new AgriFood technologies.

Research Centres have delivered research excellence in areas of national priority and are developing a pipeline of talented researchers with critical, in-demand skills. They have created an environment where multi-institutional and multidisciplinary collaborations are the norm, and where academia engages in deeply collaborative research partnerships with indigenous and multinational industries to deliver internationally leading research, cutting-edge technologies and advancements.