All-Island Bioeconomy Summit

It was my pleasure to address the All Island Bioeconomy Summit, a Satellite Event of the European Commission Bioeconomy Changemakers Festival.

I spoke of the enormous potential to leverage the bioeconomy across the island of Ireland, both in our transition to a cleaner, greener future, but also in our aim to create valuable employment and prosperity in rural areas.

I have a particular interest in supporting this potential in the Midlands, the area recognised nationally and by the EU as being most impacted by our move to a lower carbon economy. For that reason I was delighted the summit was located in Tullamore, County Offaly.

The transition to net zero by 2050 will require transformative change across our society and in our economy, and the bioeconomy offers us novel and sustainable opportunities in our industry, agriculture, marine, forestry, waste management, bioenergy, biobased chemicals and materials, and technology sectors.

Shared Island Bioeconomy Demonstration Initiative

The recent announcement of a €9 million funding initiative to develop bioeconomy projects is the first of its kind public funding call to enable the development of two bioeconomy initiatives – one in Northern Ireland on the agri-bioeconomy and one in Ireland on the blue bioeconomy.

The benefits of the bioeconomy are well-recognised and it is an area where there is huge potential to collaborate on an all-island basis.

This Government is also funding capital projects to pilot and demonstrate the bioeconomy, as part of the EU Just Transition Fund for Ireland.

In late 2023, my Department launched a €10 million funding opportunity for Bioeconomy Demonstration Initiatives. This funding offered the opportunity to support close collaboration between stakeholders along the entire bio-based value chain, including SMEs, research performing organisations, universities, local authorities, innovation clusters, primary producers, bioprocessing industries, and consumer brands.

We saw good interest from a wide range of applicants in that funding call and I am glad to say that my Department will make an official announcement concerning the successful projects in the coming weeks.

And we are not finished there! We will launch a second €10 million funding opportunity for further Bioeconomy Demonstration Initiatives under the Just Transition Fund in the coming months.

Acceleration of the bioeconomy

Overall, this investment of almost €30 million is the most significant injection of public funding to date for the development of innovative circular and sustainable, bioprocessing and biorefinery facilities.

These developments will support the production of sustainable bio-based ingredients, materials, and products from many types of biowaste, including side streams and by-products from agricultural and wood industries, food waste, municipal solid waste, or marine sources such as micro and macro algae.

These investments will create facilities and centres of expertise and training for pioneering bio-industrial processes to replace those that have been traditionally reliant on fossil based resources.?

Taken together, these actions are offering significant steps to deliver on Ireland’s bioeconomy goals in the Climate Action Plan, as well as the Ag-Food Industry led Food Vision 2030. ?

Bioeconomy Policy Implementation and Development Group

Running in tandem with this investment is an ongoing effort to ensure coherent and coordinated policy development across government for the bioeconomy.

I attended the World Food Forum in Rome in October last year, and I was in a position to be able to announce the launch of the new Bioeconomy Action Plan 2023-2025.?

With the launch of this action plan, my Department are co-leading a Cross-Government Bioeconomy Policy Group with the Department of the Environment, Climate & Communications, aimed at delivering this coordinated governance approach.

This group is focused on implementing the 33 actions contained in the National Action Plan and I look forward to their report at the end of 2024 highlighting progress.

Research

As well as piloting and demonstration, an area where my Department is also leading out on is in continued investment in bioeconomy research and innovation.

Late last year, my Department announced an investment in for bioeconomy projects worth €6.6 million. These projects will look at a variety of topics such as making better use of byproducts and coproducts of meat processing.

We will continue to invest in bioeconomy research and innovation, building capacity and capability both in terms of the science but also the talent, as a means of future proofing the development of the sector and ensuring that the pilot facilities being rolled out over the coming years can be maximised to their full potential.

The Irish Bioeconomy Forum

A further element in the implementation of the action plan is the renewal of the Irish Bioeconomy Forum, with the reformatted Forum meeting for the first time last week. This important element will ensure that the overall development of the bioeconomy is informed by a wide range of relevant industry bodies and other leading stakeholders such as state agencies, environmental, rural development, farming, community groups, and co-operatives.

The report of the Bioeconomy Forum in 2023 had a significant influence on the shape of the Action Plan and I finished up my address to the All-Island Biodiversity Summit by commending all those involved both in the Forum and elsewhere for their input.

World BioEconomy Forum Karl Walsh Patrick Barrett BioConnect Innovation Centre Circular Bioeconomy Research Group (CIRCBIO) Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

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