{"id":646794,"date":"2026-10-06T20:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T20:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646794\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T20:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T20:16:09","slug":"space-and-irelands-secret-service-the-things-you-might-have-missed-from-budget-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646794\/","title":{"rendered":"Space and Ireland\u2019s Secret Service: The things you might have missed from Budget 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have heard about childcare<\/a>, you have heard about social welfare<\/a>, and you have certainly heard about the changes to the tax<\/a> system.<\/p>\n

But while the main parts of the budget have been spoken and written about at length, these may have been missed.<\/p>\n

European Space Agency Programme<\/p>\n

The European Space Agency will get a \u20ac13m budget injection as part of Budget 2027.<\/p>\n

This will see increased investment in Ireland’s participation in the European Space Agency, enabling Irish companies to compete for a greater volume of contracts and supporting growth in the Irish space sector. <\/p>\n

Ireland supports ESA projects in areas including earth observation, secure communications, navigation systems, space transportation, and human and robotic exploration.<\/p>\n

It is also a \u201ckey element\u201d of Ireland\u2019s National Space Strategy.<\/p>\n

\n Secret Service\n <\/p>\n

Once again, Ireland\u2019s Secret Service has been allocated \u20ac2m in the budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n The directorate of military intelligence, otherwise known as J2, the main intelligence branch of the Defence Forces<\/a>, has a primary objective to work with the Government and provide information on the security of the State.<\/p>\n

\n Its budget, however, has remained stable in recent years, with it last receiving an uplift in Budget 2020, increasing from \u20ac1.25m per year to its current \u20ac2m.\n <\/p>\n

The AI Factory Antenna Initiative<\/p>\n

As part of James Lawless\u2019 research and innovation budget, which falls under the department of further and higher education, money will be put aside for \u201cIreland\u2019s high-performance computing capacity\u201d.<\/p>\n

This will result in continued support for the renewal of Ireland\u2019s High-Performance Computing capacity to enable Ireland to compete in key future research areas such as artificial intelligence<\/a> and quantum computing, including through participation in EU-led programmes such as the AI Factory Antenna initiative.<\/p>\n

Rural Pubs<\/p>\n

Some \u20ac15m has been allocated to rural pubs, which finance minister Simon Harris will help \u201ckeep the doors open\u201d.<\/p>\n

The exact details of the scheme will have to be worked out between the T\u00e1naiste and enterprise minister Peter Burke in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

However, it is expected that this will apply to draught beers.<\/p>\n

New fire stations<\/p>\n

The budget has allocated \u20ac58.7 million to continue the support for the construction of 24 new fire stations as well as the renovation or upgrading of 15 existing fire-service facilities.<\/p>\n

There will also be upgrading of national training capabilities and communications infrastructure, an ongoing programme of fleet renewal and investment in frontline and specialist response equipment across the fire services capital programme.<\/p>\n

The arts<\/p>\n

While media minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan may not have gotten his cultural cards, he did get funding for other arts projects.<\/p>\n

This includes an increase of \u20ac3.8m for the National Cultural Institutions who continue to welcome over four million visitors annually to view and appreciate the national collections, typically without any entry cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You have heard about childcare, you have heard about social welfare, and you have certainly heard about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[166626,103902,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-646794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-budget-2027","tag-cork-pubs","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}