Following a recent visit, Dr Fergal Barry, Head of Development, LIT said “he was delighted to welcome the Tánaiste to Limerick Institute of Technology. The Tánaiste’s visit is due recognition of LIT’s collaboration with and support of the SME sector through our on campus business incubation centre established in 2006 with €3.1M of funding secured from Enterprise Ireland.
The Enterprise Acceleration Centre (www.eac.ie) now hosts 20 companies with 60 staff. To date upwards of 150 companies have benefited from training, mentoring and assistance through START-UP BOOT CAMPs (1 day), the EnterpriseSTART programme (12 modules over 6 weekends), the SYOB – Start Your Own Business (10 modules over ten weeks); and the LEAP – Limerick Enterprise Acceleration Platform – programme (www.leap.ie – 1 Year). EAC clients benefit from a strong relationship with Enterprise Ireland, the Industrial Development Agency and the City Enterprise Board who are all represented on the Centre’s Advisory Board. The EAC is now recognised as the best address to start out in business in the Mid-West.”
The Tánaiste’s itinerary in LIT included a guided tour of the Enterprise Ireland funded Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre (a joint Research Centre with Institute of Technology Tralee). Shannon ABC, which is located in the Enterprise Acceleration Centre, provides state-of-the-art research equipment and expertise relevant to agricultural, food, marine, medical and pharmaceutical industries. Its mission is to drive, develop and deliver valuable and integrated approaches to solving industry’s problems associated with the better utilisation of natural materials and the novel bio-resources they contain.
Dr Siobhan Moane, Head of Research and Technology Transfer, said “LIT’s research is applied in nature and steered by its industrial collaborations with companies ranging in size from HPSUs based in our Enterprise Acceleration Centre to local and national SMEs. Collaborative research is carried out in disciplines such as Information Technology, Engineering, Renewable Energy Management, Built Environment, Environmental Monitoring and Biotechnology.”
Three companies that have completed the LEAP programme also met with the Tánaiste, John Twomey of Emutex a software engineering company. Adrian Fleming ManageCO2 ManageCO2 and Ronan Skehill with Ian Rice, of Cauwill Technologies.
