Ireland Wins Over €250m For Research and Innovation
25th March 2016
Minister for Skills, Research & Innovation, Damien English, has announced that 588 projects with Irish participation have won a total of €251 million in competitive funding from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s programme for Research and Innovation. The Higher Education system accounted for €157 million of the total and companies based in Ireland a further €72 million.
Ireland recorded a spectacular success in the Marie Sklodowska-Curie sub-programme of Horizon 2020, which promotes the training of researchers. In the most recent round of funding Ireland won €18.5 million, equivalent to 35% of the available Marie Sklodowska-Curie budget, bringing Ireland’s total from this sub-programme to €49 million.
Horizon 2020, which runs over the period from 2014-2020, has a total budget of almost €75 billion and Ireland has a national target of winning €1.25 billion in funding over the course of the programme. The results announced today covers the first two years of the programme.
Imelda Lambkin (pictured), National Director for Horizon 2020 at Enterprise Ireland said: “A key role of Enterprise Ireland is to support the commercialisation of research and the development of innovative businesses. We are proud to lead Ireland’s participation in Horizon 2020 and the €250m in funding secured by Irish researchers and companies under the programme demonstrates the strength and leadership of the people involved. We will continue to work with Irish researchers and companies to meet our Horizon 2020 funding targets as they target larger projects.”
