With us and Irish government funding in place, movement both ways along the "Atlantic Corridor" is picking up and creating opportunities for educational and business projects. These range from a genome research centre in Athlone to strategic partnerships with US companies in up-state New York.
The Atlantic Corridor Project was created in 1998 to help small and medium-sized businesses to benefit from linkages in a unique trans-Atlantic hub connecting western New York State with the midlands and Northern Ireland. Organisations in the business, education, culture and health sectors are taking part. The Government agreed in November to provide £800,000 (€1.02 million) over the next five years for the project, which is based in the Republic at Charleville Castle, Tullamore and in the city of Buffalo in the US. It has also been allocated $1 million (€1.12 million) by the US Congress for the year ending October 2001 and is hopeful of approval for further US funding for the next fiscal year. Matching funds are being sought from the EU.
Points of agreement to establish a genome research centre at Athlone were signed earlier this month between Dr Bob Blessing, senior research scientist at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute of Buffalo, and Dr Pat Mulherne, head of development at the Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT), said Ms Deborah O'Shea, president and chief executive of Atlantic Corridor-USA.
"It will create a genome research centre in Ireland, and AIT will work to send Irish and other European students to the State University of New York at Buffalo to study crystallography and genome research," Ms O'Shea said from her Buffalo office. "There will be an opportunity for them to work at Hauptman-Woodward or to go back to Ireland to the research centre there." The University of Ulster is also involved with AIT and Hauptman-Woodward in crystallography research. The level of exchange visits has been stepped up this year under an ambitious programme covering business, education and cultural events - including promotion of the premier of Nightmaze, a stage adaption of Finnegans Wake by the artistic director of Buffalo's Irish Classical Theatre Company, Mr Vincent O'Neill.
An 11-strong Irish business delegation visited Buffalo in upstate New York this month, which was led by Mr Dudley Stewart, acting chief executive of Atlantic Corridor-Ireland and Dean of International Affairs at Quest campus, the international outreach university at Charleville Castle that is behind the Atlantic Corridor. "They met a number of companies interested in strategic partnerships and in what the Irish had to say," said Ms O'Shea. Another idea being explored by Atlantic Corridor is to bring Irish faculty members to the upstate New York region to look at life-long learning projects there, following on the Irish Government's White Paper last year on Learning for Life. These would be delegates who "see a need for up-skilling that part of the Irish population that has been passed over," she said. They would look in particular at the experience of Empire State College, which focuses on adult education programmes and has several units in the Buffalo-Niagra Falls area.
Exchange visits are becoming a regular feature of the transAtlantic corridor. In January, several US business students visited Co Antrim. In the coming weeks, 10 US students will be brought to Ireland to act as consultants for US firms based in up-state New York that are interested in exploring strategic alliances with Irish and EU companies, mainly in the information technology, bio-technology and environmental sectors.
This summer, a six-week study course will be offered to students at Quest campus to learn about doing business in the European Union. They will spend time in the Republic, Northern Ireland and Brussels.
Atlantic Corridor USA will this year sponsor 30 European business and economic development leaders. Mr Brendan Doherty, owner of Rubicon Solutions in Derry, was hosted for two weeks by a Buffalo digital media arts form, Full Circle Studios, in January to see the latest technologies there, with funding from the American Management and Business Internship Training Programme. The internship programme has sponsored visits by 118 managers from companies in Northern Ireland and the Republic since it was started in 1995 as part of the US contribution to the peace process. [SBX]
The Atlantic Corridor was conceived as a transatlantic, cross-border initiative designed to assist small and mediumsized businesses gain access to the North American and European markets. Last November, a memorandum on creating an infrastructure for co-operation was signed by its four partners, Atlantic Corridor USA Inc, based in Buffalo; Niagara Economic and Tourism of Thorold in Ontario; Atlantic Corridor-Northern Ireland, based in Co Antrim, Northern Ireland; and the Regeneration Company of Co Offaly.
