Sinn Féin spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Louise O’Reilly TD, has criticised the government for failing to invest in computing and for allowing the national supercomputer to become obsolete.

Speaking today, Teachta O’Reilly said:

“High performance computing (HPC) is at the core of the fifth industrial revolution and central to growing the Irish economy and securing next-generation foreign direct investment.

“The importance of HPC to the State and the economy cannot be understated. HPC uses supercomputers to process data, perform complex calculations, and solve advanced computation problems at high speeds.

“In Ireland, high performance computing was carried out by the national supercomputer – “Kay” – hosted by the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) at University College Galway.

“Kay was used by academics, industry, state agencies, and government departments to solve complex problems quickly, such as transport system problems, healthcare strategies, developing responses to the climate crisis, helping with the development of new medicines, and other complex problems.

“Unfortunately, that ability has been stripped away due to government incompetence and inaction as Kay reached its end of life in November 2023, and has not been replaced.

“Despite advanced warning that the national supercomputer would become obsolete, and a new supercomputer – from approval, to tender, to build, to installation and configuration – would take around three years to deliver, the Minister for Higher Education, the Minister for Enterprise, and government have done nothing and there is still no indication when purchase of a new supercomputer will be actioned.

“What is even more frustrating is the delivery of a national supercomputer is co-financed through the EU European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking.

“Until we have a new national supercomputer in place, academics, industry, and the State will have to use the national supercomputer of Luxembourg, or else use the private sector – which is a risk and an expense on academics and the SME community.

“The failure by government to invest in this critical infrastructure has embarrassed Ireland in the eyes of the European and international technology community, and it will no doubt cost us the next generation of talent and affect Ireland’s ability to attract the FDI of the future in knowledge intensive sectors such as digitisation, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing.”