Chair of IT Sligo welcomes new border clustering initiative support from Enterprise Ireland.

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Chair of the Institute of Technology Sligo Governing Body, Mr Niall O Donnellan, welcomes the new clustering initiative support from Enterprise Ireland, announced by Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphries TD on the 6th of December. IT Sligo along with Dundalk IT and Letterkenny IT are working to further develop the cross-border manufacturing cluster. The three-year project will involve a particular focus on small and microenterprises.  Partners from both sides of the border will be involved. Support to the total of €297,314 has been approved by Enterprise Ireland, under the Regional Technology Clustering Scheme.

Mr O Donnellan said; “Brexit changes everything, as the UK repositions itself in the world over the next decade, with multiple implications at global, European, Ireland, and regional levels. The need for an all-island approach and in particular cross-border development partnerships is now considerably greater, and needs urgently to be progressed, to the mutual economic and social benefit of communities on both sides of the border.

This project which IT Sligo is delighted to be leading is a contribution to this process. It is a response to the call in the 2016 All-Island Oireactas Committee and Project Ireland 2040, for the stakeholders in the Northwest, rural Border counties and the Northeast M1 corridor to be all working together in shared cross-border development partnerships, for the greater good of the people in the broad region.”

IT Sligo was awarded the funding for a Border Regions Manufacturing Cluster initiative that will increase the engagement and connectivity of the three border IoTs – Sligo, Dundalk and Letterkenny. – with the economy and industry overall, and with manufacturing SMEs and micro/small companies throughout Counties Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth. It will help to strengthen productivity, competitiveness and internationalisation in this exposed manufacturing sector, which is facing the urgent issues of Brexit, internationalisation, automation/industry 4.0 and digitalisation, new technologies and the low carbon economy.