€14.6m access to European Space Observatory a boost for Irish firms

Ireland will pay €14.6m over the next decade to allow members of the Irish science community access to the world’s best space observatory — and hopes to secure multiples of that amount in return through Irish firms tendering to work on the project.

Details of the agreement between the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere — better known as the European Space Observatory — and Ireland has been laid before the Oireachtas.

A decades-long campaign by members of the Irish scientific community for Ireland to join the project finally bore fruit when it emerged last September that Ireland would join the ESO.