From Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
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Met Éireann, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is delighted to announce that Ireland has been shortlisted for the voting stage of the competition to host the ECMWF’s EU funded activities. The final decision of this selection process will be made by the ECMWF Council at its next meeting on 9 December 2020.
Met Éireann, led the preparation of the bid in conjunction with an Interdepartmental Working Group which was supported by the IDA, SFI and Enterprise Ireland. The shortlisting of Ireland’s bid represents a recognition of Ireland’s significant potential to support a world leading research centre in weather, climate and earth system science – and to contribute to Europe’s response to the defining challenges of the 21st century: climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.
The European Centre for Medium Range Forecasting (ECMWF) is a global leader in numerical weather prediction for medium range forecasting and is located in Reading, UK. It is an international intergovernmental organisation of which Ireland is a member state and represented on the ECMWF Council by Met Éireann.
Owing to ECMWF’s world-leading scientific capability, the European Commission selected it to deliver a range of EU funded weather and climate research and services. The most significant of these activities are Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).
As a consequence of BREXIT, a competition to relocate all ECMWF’s EU-funded activities from Reading in the UK to an EU Member State is taking place during 2020.
ECMWF’s Headquarters will remain in Reading. This competition relates only to those activities carried out by ECMWF that are EU funded and not to the core ECMWF activities which will continue to be based at the main ECMWF centre in Reading.
Ireland, along with 9 other Member States were confirmed eligible to participate in the competition.
The key benefits from the relocation of ECMWF’s EU-funded activities to Ireland centre around employment and enhanced strategic reputation including the transfer of up to 250 jobs, aligning with Irish Government Strategy Global Ireland - Ireland’s global footprint to 2025 and increasing Ireland’s “pull factor” for the creation of new green economy jobs and the potential for rapid growth of the Irish Climate Services ecosystem.
ENDS