CeADAR was delighted to welcome Minister of State for Digital Transformation and Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, TD, on a tour of its offices.

Minister Calleary was at CeADAR to chair a meeting of the Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum, which was established to support the government in driving the digitalisation of enterprise across Ireland.

The EDAF – of which CeADAR’s Director Edward McDonnell is a member – brings together representatives of indigenous enterprise of all sizes, multi-national enterprises, and experts in digital technologies and their adoption by enterprise. The forum provides a focused body for government to hear the views and perspectives of enterprise and experts.

CeADAR Centre Director Edward McDonnell says:
“We were delighted to have the Minister here today to show him the essential work that CeADAR is doing across a broad range of industries to ensure Ireland’s companies are using AI and Machine Learning to make their companies and Ireland more competitive on a global scale.
At CeADAR, we are developing a broad range of applied research projects for industry including large language models, generative AI, trustworthy and explainable AI, and advanced Machine Learning,.
These projects are leading the way in ensuring that industry in Ireland is incorporating AI into theirbusinesses to drive performance and competitiveness.”
Minister of State for Digital Transformation and Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary TD, said:
“I was delighted to convene the Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum meeting here at CeADAR, Ireland’s designated AI hub. Given the significant advancements in recent months both on the technological front, and in public discussion and debate around artificial intelligence, our meeting was focused on
AI.
The Forum is an important body to hear from industry and experts on digital issues and we had a very good discussion today around how to boost the uptake of AI by businesses and also how to work to address concerns that people may have in relation to AI.
As Ireland’s designated AI hub, CeADAR is soon to be a member of Ireland’s network of European Digital Innovation hubs. CeADAR will serve as Ireland’s one stop shop for AI transformation for businesses of all sizes and the public sector. It will give them the tools to compete in an increasingly fast-changing world. This makes CeADAR vital for Ireland’s future enterprise landscape and I am looking forward to it becoming operational soon.’

Funded by Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, CeADAR has more than 90-member companies across a wide span of industries and is one of the Digital Innovation Hubs across the EU focused on delivering AI services to industry. The primary work of the Centre is on cutting-edge applied research and
developing and deploying industry prototypes and solutions to companies. CeADAR is also very active in European research projects, spinouts, industry upskilling and has its own high-performance computing infrastructure. CeADAR will also be a member of the network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, one of four from Ireland. Each Irish hub is set to receive annual funding of €1.9 million. In total, the European Union isinvesting over €700 million to co-fund a Europe-wide network of hubs.