Councils Partner With Enterprise Ireland To Launch Joint SBIR Competition

Two councils have partnered with Enterprise Ireland to launch a joint Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) challenge based competition.

Belfast and Dublin City Councils joined together with Enterprise Ireland to offer €230,000 to businesses to develop low cost, innovative and commercially viable solutions that can help optimise goods deliveries in both cities.

Councillor Aileen Graham, Deputy Chair of Belfast City Council's Strategic Policy and Resources Committee explains: "The changing nature of business, particularly the growth of online retail, has changed the way goods are delivered in both of our city centres. And this has had an impact on things like air quality, traffic management and infrastructure.

"We made a commitment in The Belfast Agenda to improve the city living experience and make it easy to do business. So we're partnering with Dublin to understand these changes in more detail. We also want to explore ways to enhance the effectiveness of deliveries for city centre business.

"We have some fantastic, innovative companies in Belfast and I encourage them to apply to this competition. This is an opportunity to bring fresh thinking to a growing challenge shared by most cities and therefore offers commercial opportunities."

Belfast City Council is hosting an information session for interested companies at Belfast City Hall on Thursday, 17 May.

There is also an information session in Dublin on 15 May.

The competition is funded through Enterprise Ireland's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme, which supports businesses to develop new ideas and solutions for the public sector that may become commercially viable products and services.