Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 November 2023
244. Deputy Michael McNamara asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the amount of Exchequer funding allocated towards the Eirsat-1 project; to outline the total amount paid to the European Space Agency to date in 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52001/23]
View answerThrough Ireland’s membership to the European Space Agency (ESA), University College Dublin (UCD) secured the opportunity in May 2017 to develop, launch and operate, what will be, Ireland’s first satellite EIRSAT-1 through the ESA’s Fly Your Satellite! programme.
The EIRSAT-1 project is led by UCD, with participation from academic staff and students and is supported by Irish industrial partners, SensL (Cork) and ENBIO (Dublin) which will provide in-orbit demonstration of their technologies. EIRSAT-1 is expected to be launched on Friday 1, December.
In addition to funding and support from ESA, the project has also received Exchequer funding through several national agencies. In 2019, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) awarded €40,470, via the Discover programme, for educational activities relating to EIRSAT-1 launch and operations.
The Irish Research Council (IRC) has funded PhD students where a partial element of their project involved a contribution to the EIRSAT-1 project. However, the value in monetary terms cannot be quantified as the amount of time contributed by the PhD students is not available to the IRC.
The IRC has also sponsored an EIRSAT-1 workshop in May 2022 to the value of €6,535. This was a collaborative project involving the UCD EIRSAT-1 team, UCD Research, the School of English, Drama and Film, Museum of Literature Ireland, and JCSP Libraries, who are working with DEIS junior cert students.
To date in 2023, the State has paid €22.87m to the ESA. Additional funding of €2.864m is due to be paid to ESA by Enterprise Ireland before year end. Ireland's increased investment in ESA in recent years is in line with the National Strategy for Space Enterprise 2019 - 2025 which aims to build an economically sustainable and expanding space-active industry, delivering quality jobs for the economy of tomorrow.
