Ireland boosts marine research with €3.3M in funding grants

The Irish government has awarded funding to 20 research projects in the areas of specialist marine equipment, and ocean law and marine governance.

The Marine Institute of Ireland provided more than €2.5 million for 19 grants in the area of specialist marine equipment and small infrastructure, out of which 14 will go to the Higher Education Institutes (HEI) and five to industry-led proposals.

Among the recipients is the University College Cork, which was granted almost €170,000 for the Lir National Ocean Test Facility (Lir-NOTF) Enhancement Project.

LIR-NOTF is a custom designed test facility which operates within the MaREI Centre at the Beaufort Building in Cork, Ireland, housing the infrastructure for small to medium-scale laboratory testing of ocean and maritime systems.

The ocean law and marine governance grant has been awarded to a partnership project between the MaREI Centre and University College of Cork School of Law.

The funding amounts to €800,000 and will run over four years, employing three researchers with contributions from 12 MaREI and 5 UCC School of Law staff. The project, dubbed Navigate, will seek to establish a knowledge base of marine law developed around a matrix of sectors and pressures.

Michael Creed, Ireland’s Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, said: “The funding for marine research equipment helps to target a gap in funding that exists between supports available to Higher Education Institutes via HEA and support from Ireland’s development agencies such as SFI and Enterprise Ireland. These grants will allow the marine research and innovation community to purchase specialist equipment needed to support their current and future research activities.”

Peter Heffernan, CEO of the Marine Institute, added the funding grants would enable pioneering marine research projects to develop in decades to come.