28th April 2026 |
Reports
Further to the publication of the White Paper on Enterprise 2022-2030, which contains a commitment to have 5 national clusters, in March 2024 the then Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment engaged three international experts on clustering from TCI (The Competitiveness Institute) to undertake a Peer Review for a New Cluster Policy and Strategy in Ireland.
The three experts were; Merete Daniel Nielsen, co-founder and CEO for Cluster Excellence Denmark for 15 years; David Fernández, Head of the Cluster Programme at the Dept. of Economic Development and Competitiveness of the Basque Country Government; and Helmut Kergel, Director of the European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis (ESCA) in VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbHp and involved in the management, coordination, and evaluation of collaborative innovation projects at national and EU level and the development of indicators and processes for assessing cluster management quality and benchmarking.
The Peer Review included a one-day workshop, facilitated by the international experts, in Trinity College Dublin which was attended by over 70 stakeholders from the Irish clustering ecosystem.
The Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity, launched last year, outlines 85 actions to protect the future of our economy in an uncertain global climate. It recognised clustering as a key tool to drive innovation, attract global investment, promote international visibility and support place-based growth.
This builds on the commitment in the Programme for Government to have 5 clusters of scale to build competitiveness, which in turn is underpinned by the strong all-island focus which is a key foundation of the Programme for Government.
The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment is providing €2.3 million over the next six years for the initial 3 clusters as part of Programme for Government and Action Plan on Competitiveness. Two of those initial pilots will be CyberIreland and Advanced Technology in Manufacturing (ATIM) with a potential third one in semiconductors.
Topics:
Innovation Research and Development, The Business Environment