United Kingdom: Sinn Fein politician describes Ireland’s lack of national supercomputer as “embarassing”

Louise O'Reilly, Teachta Dála (TD) and spokesperson for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment of the Sinn Féin political party has criticized the Irish government for failing to acquire a new supercomputer. "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," she said.

“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 the purchase of a new supercomputer will be actioned," said O'Reilly.

O'Reilly added: "The failure by the 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 digitization, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing.”