Environmental areas of focus in the Republic of Ireland

In 2010, the market size of the Environmental Goods
and Services sector was estimated to be over €3
billion. Irish food and drink exports are worth €10.6 billion and the Origin Green dimension of marketing for these exports is intimately linked to environmental quality and sustainability.In 2009 a High Level Action Group on Green
Enterprise established by Forfás and the Department
of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation published its
report Developing the Green Economy in Ireland.

Directly as a result of its recommendations, €660
million was committed to sustainable energy
programmes, water services investment and
retrofitting of the public housing stock. A recovery rate
of 70 per cent has been achieved for packaging waste,
exceeding the EU target of 60 per cent by 2011.

Progress continues to be made on EU Landfill Directive
diversion targets for biodegradable municipal waste.
Strides are also being made towards developing
further investment in water services, wind energy,
electric cars, promoting biological waste recycling and
supports for bioenergy, supported by the Sustainable
Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).

Environment Ireland is Ireland’s annual conference
on environmental policy and management, organised
in association with the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and the Department of Environment,
Community and Local Government to discuss issues
such as waste management, planning, environmental
regulation, water reform, transport and climate
change.

The IBM Technology Campus in Dublin hosts the
Smarter Cities Technology Centre, where research is
carried out on science and technology for smarter
urban and environmental systems such as transport,
communication, water and energy. A key focus of the
project is to investigate how advanced analytics and
visualisation techniques, coupled with solutions such
as Cloud, stream, and high performance computing,
can help city authorities make optimal use of
resources.