The National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork is a strategic national asset. Increasingly, our success as a country in the coming decades will depend on our ability to adapt to a society of high skills and specialised knowledge. In this regard all our universities and research institutes, including the NMRC, will have a critical role to play.
Growth based on a market-led approach must be at the heart of the NMRC's mission. It must sell itself, by every means available, as a postgraduate/technology-driven centre of excellence to potential industrial clients.
The NMRC has made major strides in expanding its links with industry, both overseas and indigenous. In addition, it has been successful in expanding its facilities by use of own resources. A major extension has been completed which, for the first time in many years, puts all the NMRC activities under one roof — a major proportion of the cost of this has been contributed by the NMRC's industrial clients. In the coming years, I look forward to the NMRC continuing to expand its technological capability and to a continuation of the positive dynamism which the NMRC has displayed in providing an ever broadening range of microelectronics services to Irish industry.