(iv) Driving the development of skills needed for ‘needs led’ innovation in the regions Smart Specialisation in our regions will drive the development of skills needed for enhancing innovation activity across the regional economies. This will be achieved in the programme area through new and enhanced supports based on creating the necessary skills for ‘needs led’ innovation, informed by existing international and national best practice and by our smart specialisation analysis and findings. (v) Strengthening and developing functional regional innovation ecosystems Smart Specialisation in our regions will encourage more regionally dispersed RD&I, strengthen the enterprise base and identify emerging areas of opportunity. This will be achieved by leveraging and building on the analysis of Irish regions’ strengths and emerging areas of opportunity undertaken as part of the development of Ireland’s S3; addressing gaps in existing regional innovation infrastructures and systems by supporting projects aligned with the nine Regional Enterprise Plans (REPs); and seeking out opportunities to enable inter-regional collaboration through structures like the REP national oversight group. These regional challenges are aligned under two of the PO1 specific objectives: developing and enhancing research and innovation capacities and the uptake of advanced technologies (RSO1.1); and enhancing sustainable growth and competitiveness of SMEs and job creation in SMEs, including by productive investments (RSO1.3) Investment needs under the three remaining PO1 specific objectives will be met through other sources of public and private investment. This will include national funding of a wide range of grant supports and financial instruments for SMEs and public research bodies, including for example, the research centres, innovation partnership programme, commercialisation fund and the microenterprise schemes that were ERDF co-financed in 2014-2020. The Programme will complement actions under the NRRP to support the digitalisation of businesses, to drive reforms in regional skills development, digital infrastructure in schools, staff and curriculum development in the technological universities, and to use mission-oriented challenges to incentivise researchers to deliver tangible impact for society in areas such as health, agriculture and climate through a new National Grand Challenges Programme in research. Enterprise Ireland, an Intermediary Body under the Programme, leads the National Support Network for Horizon Europe and as such will provide important opportunities for complementarities between Horizon Europe and ERDF supported actions. The Programme responds to S3 ambitions by strengthening the new TUs to be regional innovation leaders. These TUs have had some success in Horizon Europe but had not had the real capacity needed to compete in this environment or to bring regional actors such as SMEs and TUs together in a meaningful way. This new capacity is designed to address that very issue, the Programme is therefore highly complementary to and synergistic with Horizon Europe ambitions. The Programme will also complement funding and activities under the other CPR funds, Connecting Europe Facility, LIFE programme, InvestEU and other financial instruments managed by the European Investment Bank. This includes activities that support the objectives of the Atlantic Action Plan 2.0. For example, investment in RD&I capacity building in the programme area will support EMFAF investment in research to tackle climate actions, knowledge sharing, development of process innovation to support operational optimisation in the processing sector and research to quantify the potential of coastal habitats as carbon sinks . Actions under PO1 are closely aligned to many of the actions set out under the European Research Area (ERA) policy agenda, in particular Action 15 to Build-Up Regional and National R&I Ecosystems to Improve Regional/National Excellence and Competitiveness, Action 16 to Improve EU-Wide Access to Excellence, and Action 17 to Enhance the Strategic Capacity of Europe’s Public Research Performing Organisations. For example, the focus on strengthening RDI capacity in the TUs will see TUs extend latent research and innovation excellence into their regions (but also nationally and internationally), by working with enterprise actors to create and exploit knowledge in line with the ERA policy agenda.
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