Funding for this extension to the Tyndall National Institute was approved by Ms Coughlan’s predecessor, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin, in 2006. Its state-of-the-art facilities allow world-leading research to be conducted in Cork

Tyndall National Institute will also be the location for the new Competence Centre for Applied Technology (CANN), funded by Enterprise Ireland to the tune of €5 million.

The Centre was established by companies that have come together to define their common research interests, Ms Coughlan said. These include Intel, Seagate, Medtronic and Analog Devices, along with Irish firms Aerogen, Audit Diagnostics, Creganna and Proxy Biomedical.

It is expected that the reputation of the Institute in supporting such firms will boost the country’s ability to attract inward investment by major international companies.

Activities at CANN will be led in collaboration with researchers at Trinity College Dublin’s nanotechnology centre and Dublin City University. According to Enterprise Ireland research and innovation manager Martin Lyes, the work will include finding better ways of delivering drugs and improved diagnostics for the health sector, while better storage and memory capacity for electronic devices will also be developed.

Tyndall chief executive Prof Roger Whatmore said the opening of the new facility marked the beginning of a new phase in Tyndall’s mission as a key enabler of the so-called smart economy, which will see research developed over the past 10 years translated into real-world solutions.

“This translation of research solutions by our Irish-based industry partners, both indigenous and multinational, into industry has been one of the hallmarks of Tyndall’s success and we look forward to continuing to develop real economic value to the Irish economy,” he said.

Intel Ireland managing director Jim O’Hara said the centre would be "integral to the way countries and the entire world develop, including how we solve the world’s energy problems." 

Mr O’Hara said that "semiconductors for computer chips have come from having 2,000 transistors when he first worked in the industry in the early 1970s to having more than two billion today".

"It’s all about doubling the amount of power in a particular unit of silicon and halving the cost, and at the same time reducing the energy. But anyone who thinks the limits have been reached should know that further developments will be continuing for a few years to come," he said.

Much of Tyndall’s ongoing work is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). Prof Frank Gannon, SFI Director General, said the new facility was further evidence of the institute’s upward trajectory in enhancing Ireland’s research infrastructure and international reputation.

The president of UCC, Dr Michael Murphy, said that the Tyndall Institute had played a crucial role in both increasing UCC’s research income by 40 per cent over the past five years to €79 million last year, and expanding the number of doctoral students at the university by more than 50 per cent to just under 1,000. (Sources: Irish Examiner, Irish Times)