Dr. Willie Donnelly spoke to Conor Brophy on Morning Ireland giving details of a new research and innovation centre - a joint initiative in Kilkenny between Waterford Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Carlow and local authorities in Kilkenny.
The centre is based on a similar model in WIT, Dr. Willie Donnolly described it as a new model of research and innovation - co-locating industry and research and allowing ideas to flow between academia and industry. The target areas in the new centre in Kilkenny are agriculture and financial services.
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Quarterly results from HP brought news of a 31 per cent drop in profit and a 3 per cent fall in revenue. Those results were actually better than Wall Street analysts were expecting.
Of more significance HP will cut 27,000 jobs, 8% of its global workforce. No detail on where those cuts will fall either in terms of which division or geographically. HP employs 4,000 people in Ireland between Dublin, Galway, Kildare and Belfast. A spokesperson for HP declined to comment on whether or not Ireland would be affected by these plans.
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Intel, has confirmed that Ireland will be one of just three locations worldwide in which it is to make its new generation of computer chips.
The other two are Oregon and Arizona so Intel's Leixlip plant will be the only one outside the US to make these new chips. We could be talking investment of up to a billion euro to fit out the plant to make these new chips and significant job creation prospects too we understand.
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The Chinese manufacturing sector looks set to post its seventh consecutive fall in output according to figures published this morning.
That's not really a surprise considering several of Europe's largest economies are either in recession or showing anaemic growth. Clearly if demand is down then Chinese factories will have to adjust for that and that's what seems to be happening.
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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal economist Peter Bacon has said Spain could do with setting up its own version of the National Asset Management Agency.
Peter Bacon of course was the architect of Nama. And although he has been a noted critic of the way Nama operates he says the core idea of forcing banks to recognise the true level of property related losses on their books and moving the distressed assets off their balance sheets is the right way to proceed to provide certainty and reassure investors.
Spain has, meanwhile, announced the amount of state funding to be provided to its third largest lender Bankia will be 9 billion euro as it continues to deal with the fallout from the bursting of its property bubble.
