IRISH ORGANISATIONS have received more than €3 million in funding for security research projects from the European Commission’s seventh Framework Programme.
The rate of involvement by Irish small and medium-sized enterprises in the programme is one of the highest in the EU, at 53 per cent compared to the EU average of 22 per cent.
On a cash-per-capita basis, Irish participants ranked sixth of the 27 EU countries, behind Luxembourg, Austria, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands.
There are nine participants from Ireland in the 2009-2010 programme, including small independent companies and research groups in universities. They received 1.58 per cent of the total budget, or €3,399,444.
The Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork is co-ordinating a project dubbed CommonSense, which involves the development of a common sensor platform for the detection of improvised explosive device factories.
Cork-based company SensL is also working on this project and the Police Service of Northern Ireland is involved.
Cork Institute of Technology and Dublin-based technology firm Skytek are part of the Perseus initiative, which has 30 participants across Europe.
It involves the protection of European seas and borders through the intelligent use of surveillance.
Other Irish participants include SteriPack, the Nautical Enterprise Centre, Trinity College Dublin’s civil engineering department, Keith Simpson Associates and the electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering faculty at UCD.
The areas of research range beyond IT security to include crisis management, radioactive fallout, detection of suspect money transfers and coastal security.
Michael Murphy, the Enterprise Ireland contact point for the Seventh Framework Programme, said Irish involvement was higher than expected.
“We came up a long way against expectations because we don’t have a tradition in general security research.
“Now we’re certainly getting a profile,” he said.
The Irish Security Research Network has more than 500 members.
Mr Murphy said the idea of the group was to act as a point of contact, to consider other possibilities of ECEU funding, and to see how participation in projects like this, such as the Seventh Framework Programme, could help to foster an export industry.
According to a European Commission report on the competitiveness of the EU security sector published last year, the global civil security market is worth an estimated €103 billion.
