Minister Heydon and Minister of State Grealish announce €5.9m for new ICT, environmental, animal welfare and bioeconomy research

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, TD, and Minister of State with special responsibility for research Noel Grealish, TD, today announced €5.9 million in research funding under the international strand of the Department’s Research Programme.

Announcing the awards, Minister Heydon, said: “As one of the key funders of research in Ireland, my Department considers international collaboration a priority. Given the complexity of some of the scientific challenges facing our sector, and considering the commonality of these across countries, it makes sense for researchers to collaborate internationally. I am therefore delighted to announce €5.9 million in combined funding which will enable Irish researchers to lead or participate in fourteen projects with partners across the EU and the US”. These projects have been successful in three competitive European research calls and the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership. The Irish researcher participation is made possible due to financial support from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. For his part, Minister of State Grealish, said: “We have excellent research talent here in Ireland and I am delighted that this has been recognised by the success of the Irish participants in the fourteen projects across these four international research calls. The collaboration and sharing of expertise, resources and ideas will be across a wide range of areas including ICT and data technologies for farmers, bio-circularity, agroecological approaches at farm level, soil health, climate adaptation, crop breeding, and animal health and welfare”.