 Good afternoon everybody, and thank you for allowing us run over a little. There was some good conversations happening. We didn't want to interrupt. My name is Barry Colfer, and I'm the director of research here at the IIA. Very warm welcome to those of you are able to join us here at our premises in Dublin. And indeed, hello and welcome to those who are joining online. I'm really delighted to welcome you to Space, a new frontier for Ireland. I'm really happy we have found the space in our program for this event. I want to welcome everybody, but specifically an old colleague is back, Nisha Kenny is here in the room, and he helped pull together this event he's now moved on to different fields but indeed it was his idea to have this event so great to have you back Nisha. And he's now moved on to the Department of Foreign Affairs. I'm absolutely delighted that Professor Jane Souter, Professor of political communications at DCU director of the DCU Institute of future media democracy and society, and head of research for the Irish citizens assembly is able to chair. Thank you very much, Jane for being with us and for supporting the work of the Institute. Jane is going to introduce the panelists. But before that we're really thrilled that we finally have found a birth for Professor Neil Richmond to speak with us. Neil is the Minister of State of the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, and is responsible for many things up to an including space. So Neil, very warm welcome and if you'd be good enough to give us some opening remarks. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen by thank you very much that kind of introduction I think you just promoted me from Minister to Professor. Which I think would scare the life out of Jane to be honest, if I was going to join as one of our colleagues, but Barry, I'm really delighted to come to what I think is a new frontier for the IIA as well this topic and I think it's brilliant to have the opportunity to to introduce something so brilliant and look politics and I say ambassador you might agree with this sometimes it's very hard to convince your teenage nieces and nephews that you've got an interesting job and cynical enough as they are bringing them to open a pennies was a good start, but then telling them that you're the Minister for space is definitely something I wasn't expecting when I was very lucky to be appointed this position back in January, but you're going to hear some amazing remarks from some amazing people shortly. I just wanted to set the scene a little bit from a government point of view from a policy point of view indeed from an investment point of view, a number of you in the audience and I've done it out even more watching online will be very familiar with the topics which I touch on, but I think it's important to set the scene and to the panel. I'm obviously daunted by your intelligence and expertise but that's quite regular for me so that's okay. And, but beyond that, I'm really looking forward to listening back in because unfortunately the diversity of my brief meant I spent this morning with Gordon Ramsey in and I'm joining you here for my lunch this afternoon and then I travel straight to Colarney to hand out health and safety awards to 600 people at a black tie banquet. And so unfortunately I won't be able to say for the full discussion, but I can assure you having shared many a panel indeed a studio with Jane and be on your guard. She's ruthless. You couldn't you couldn't have chosen a better chair Barry and it's always great to be here. Ladies and gentlemen it's been an exciting few years for space in Ireland with Irish technology, being part of many of the recent international initiatives, such as the juice mission and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. At a national level we'll soon be launching Ireland's very first satellite air sat one. This is an amazing achievement not just because it was developed and built in my own constituency where I was able to visit and get a look at I'm not a hold and can I just take a moment here that I have never been so frightened in my life, then going into the clean room in UCD, where right in front of me was a satellite. And I was fully garbed up and behind me was 25 of the most intelligent people have ever met in my life looking through the gas saying, if he ruins my life work for a selfie that is going to put an Instagram, I'm going to kill her. And, but it was brilliant. And the people behind that the full team of physicists, engineers, academics, it's been a monumental achievement. I really mean this sincerely. This is, I make lots of facetious comments and take the mic occasionally. But when I say that we have to put this satellite on a stamp, we have to get every single primary school child in Ireland dialed in to watch this launch. This is something that could be the start of something really special. What has gone into that the effort that has gone into this is truly amazing and the fact that we're launching our first satellite is just something that I am absolutely in awe of the people behind it. And I'm truly excited about genuinely mean that and it's something I hope would transcend politics and everything else but though we are launching our first satellite Ireland's interest in space is nothing new. In 1975, when we joined the European Space Agency, even then we knew that membership could help Irish companies to develop innovative space related technologies in the near near 40 years. I'd say closer to 50 years since our continued investment in the European Space Agency, coupled with growing investment by the European Union in space, has ensured that Ireland and Irish businesses are very well placed to benefit from the rapid growth of the space to ensure we are best placed to take advantage of this growth government Ireland government launched Ireland's first ever national space strategy for enterprise in 2019, which aims to support the industry and deliver quality jobs as a result. So what have we achieved to date with the number of Irish companies who have secured contracts with the European Space Agency has grown from 60 in 2017 to 97 in 2022. And I'm sure that these businesses are extremely advanced using all extremely sophisticated technology and create an extremely good, well paying well qualified jobs. In fact, the value of these ESA contracts here in Ireland in 2022 alone was 13.5 million euro. This is exactly why investment in ESA is so important, we've committed to investing 125 million euro over the next five years. I'm delighted that this week in budget 2024, we announced an additional 3.3 million euro funding for ESA, bringing its total allocation to 2026 million euro. And in 2019 when the strategy was first launched funding was just 18 million euro, the increase in funding is a clear illustration of Ireland's commitment to the space sector. So what is important is important on so many levels. Firstly, it sends a clear message to our friends in Europe that Ireland is a key player in the European Space Industry, but it also tells the space technology industry here in Ireland that we are firmly behind them. We want the industry to grow, we want to see more space research in Ireland, we want to see more Irish companies starting up and seizing the opportunities that this sector has to offer, both for their own sake, but also for society for the environment for research and for the economy. I was working in these businesses at an ESA Business Incubation Centre event in Nova UCD, alongside Peter, and I was extremely impressed by the quality of ESA supported Irish companies who are developing innovative technologies both for use in either space, but also more important for application here on earth. These are companies that are using Saklise and Spake technology to improve the accessibility of our towns, making farms more efficient and improving transport flows. I was able to see myself, the impact that our investment in ESA is having not only to our economy, but in supporting these mainly young entrepreneurs and helping them gain further capital investment. While I've touched on the significant opportunities for Ireland with the space sector, it would be remiss of me to ignore the geopolitical context and security concerns that come alongside this. As we face a complex and challenging security environment on earth, space is also becoming increasingly contested. This is where our involvement in ESA becomes even more important. I firmly believe that we are stronger when we work together on a European level and spaces simply no different. The EU space strategy for security and defence reflects that there is a heightened awareness of the vulnerabilities associated with space. This is all the more important in a context where our activity in space is increasingly crucial for our economy and our society. With more and more Irish companies getting involved in this area, we need to ensure their work is protected. Ireland plays our full part here. We have to, we have an active role both through space working party meetings and the space competitiveness council which I intend. And we are involved in UN processes working to ensure the exclusivity exclusively peaceful use of space, ensure it is not militarised and that there is equitable access to space resources. This is work that absolutely will be continued in fact in just a few weeks I'll be attending a joint EU ESA meeting in Seville, where I'll meet my European counterparts discuss how space activities can both support our economies but also help us with our decarbonisation and climate goals. As someone who spent five years talking about Brexit it's nice to have something different to talk on a European scale, but I won't lie, whilst the opportunities are truly exciting and monumental, the risks are scary and they're a lot scarier than trusted traders and alternative arrangements I can tell you that Jane. To finish I'd like to emphasise that this is a really exciting time for space and in particular the space industry in Ireland with Irish companies well placed to take a greater share of the global space market between the rise in Irish involvement in space technology and our pending satellite launch. This is a great time to have this discussion. I'm really genuinely so grateful that you gave me a few minutes just to lay out exactly how serious and how important the Irish government believe this sector is and I have deliberately avoided using any laboured space puns unlike Barry, because I think that really takes away from the opportunities that are going on here. So I was to say it, Barry it's perfectly acceptable for you to say it, because it was quite funny, but I'd made a hand-fisted job, but more importantly I really want to lay out the 97 companies that have engaged in these are just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much greater opportunity from an economic point of view and I say that as a Minister at the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, but how that can benefit research academia and how that can really seep into the classrooms across the country I think is really groundbreaking. So we're going to invest more money over the next few years, we're going to put more emphasis on it and we're going to bring more Irish people hope to do more work in this area. I'll lead the panel perhaps touching those topics a little bit more. Barry, thank you so much as ever. Thank you very much to Alex White as ever for all the work the IIA do and just before I close this is the first time I've had the opportunity to be in this building and number of years ago since the passing of Brendan Halligan, it will be remiss of me not to acknowledge him for any of you who are friends of the IIA or who have been involved in Irish public affairs at any stage over the last 50 years. I think you will have a fair idea of just what a massive impact he had, not just in the European Parliament, not just in Europe, but far more importantly, his work particularly what I got to know him over the last 10 or 15 years in the public discourse space has been monumental and I just want to take a moment to say that. Thank you very much enjoy the rest of the discussion. Thank you Minister that that was, that was great very welcome. And I'm sure everybody welcomed promises of future investment and more jobs. So I'm pleased to welcome you all here today for the discussion at the IIA and delighted to be joined by Shanaida Sullivan here from the Harvard Business School Institute for strategy and Compassionist. And Peter Smith, who's the commercial director at Tyndall and Rory Fitzpatrick CEO of the National Space Center. And thank you all for being so generous to give up your, your time today. So each of our panelists are going to speak for between 10 and 15 minutes. And then we'll get to Q&A with all of you, our audience here, and all of those who've joined us online. So for those of you in the room. You'll be able to join the discussion just put up your hand and you'll get a mic and just introduce yourselves and any affiliation you have. Just to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to speak. Please keep your questions or comments reasonably succinct. And for all of you joining us online welcome. And you can of course join the discussion using the Q&A function. And this will appear here so please just put in your questions as they occurred to you during the session. Thank you. Just a reminder to everybody that everything today is on the record. And for any of you who are still on Twitter or X, it's at IIEA. So I'll introduce Sinead to you first and then hand over to her. So Sinead has like most amazing resume. She has a PhD in strategy at Harvard Business School at the Institute for strategy and competitiveness with Professor Michael Porter. But on top of that, she's also a professor of aerospace engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She's formerly a research fellow at MIT's College of Computing and MIT Sloan, as well as a human spaceflight mission designer for NASA. She has a PhD in propulsion laboratory. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology, innovation, geopolitics and defense. So, wow. She is on the board of the European Space Policy Institute and has advised over one billion of space technology investment and M&A transactions. So welcome Sinead. We're all absolutely thrilled that you were able to join us here today. Thank you for having me. This is my first time in this building. It's lovely to be here. I was asked last night if I had slides and the answer was no. And then I was like, oh, maybe I do. So apologies. It shouldn't go on for more than an hour. Please cut me off. It feels on too long. You know, I thought it might be interesting to kind of think about the role of of Ireland and the role of the government. And so, you know, these are some of the slides that I've taken from I teach a class in the business and economics of space. And so there's about 600 slides for that class, but about three of them here. It would be remiss of me not to look at what the government has done and how the space sector really started, which was a public sector industry. And there are some amazing, amazing missions that have that have come from the public sector. You know, I think some of the rhetoric today is kind of the public sector is useless at doing innovation. It's too slow. It's too expensive. But historically, you know, looking at that diagram is a great reminder of what the public sector has historically been able to achieve. Moving forward, one of the most important innovations that we've seen come out of the space sector really came out of NASA's ability to move from cost plus contracting through to fix price. The idea initially was to move from government is the only customer to government as is one of many customers. Now I don't have this little thing. Ah, there we go. Okay, it doesn't go on the screen. I don't think we're quite there. We're definitely moving in the direction. We are very much at the stage now where government is the anchor tenant, which I'll discuss in a few minutes, but provides some interesting interaction between public and private sector. Okay, so the public private sector today, it really is a mix of both. You can find this graph online, you know, roughly $400 billion global space economy this graph is for the year old. Anything in this in this kind of top left quadrant, the brownie rng color, really is looking at the government dod, or the US government budget and then also non US government budgets. And interestingly here this is kind of what I think about this emerging interaction between public and private sector. And, you know, traditionally this is this is what would have been self contained within the dod or the government. And now we're starting to see that these, the spending is being delivered through private contracts. Those private contracts are the real reason why we're starting to see the growth of private sector companies in this space. This graph is really interesting for a million different reasons. When I teach you know we might spend a week on this graph alone. But interestingly, if you look at, it's a pity that it doesn't work on the screen. It's really hard to see the launch services in there. And people are always really surprised, because there's so much noise about SpaceX and launch. Just how small it is of the global space economy. It's really important, but very small. Something that could be a much longer conversation. So looking at where we are now the growth of private financing that is really moving and helping NASA and other government agencies move into kind of more private public contracting. So coming from this graph, you can see, you know, one of the big changes over time is this big blue column which is venture capital and that's kind of, you know, the sexy hot topic that that people have been talking about for the last few years. I just want to highlight quickly a couple of things that I was thinking about this morning that I actually hadn't noticed before that I think are quite interesting. So what I'm trying to see on the screen because it's like, you know, what not to do in the presentation, the colors all look the same, but I'll describe it to you in case you can't see so into in in 2013 and 2014. The non blue colors there's actually quite a bit of private equity activity happening the space industry and I remember that at the time because that's kind of when I moved into the space, space financing because for the first time there's, you know, kind of this big large amount of private equity sector, private equity financing. After that there's a massive rise in venture capital, but interestingly, there's a lot lower amount of private equity happening in the industry. And then if you look at the last column in 2020, the bubble at the top or the column at the top is public offerings. Most of those are facts. So thinking about it this morning I really thought about the fact that there was a lack of private equity activity recently followed by this kind of bubble of IPOs. And to me that asks one of the question one of the questions that asks is private equity financing really goes after maturing companies that are moving into reliable revenue, reliable growth sustainable. I guess sustainable market growth, not seeing private equity activity actually should be quite concerning in those in those in the last few years, which to me indicates, you know, one of the questions we should be asking within the community is, I think we provided a way for venture capital to create companies that leads to more reliable structures, sustainable growth, and the big bubble of facts at the end suggest potentially not. The other thing that we've seen, which this is amazing actually this graph this came from seraphim in 2021 I think if you look at this now it's going to be, you know twice the size of this. If you look at the entire value chain of the space industry there, there isn't any way you can look at like a really weird tiny small part of the space industry. You won't see any part of it that doesn't have a ton of different startups going after it, which is great because that suggests that the private sector financing has really created the ecosystem of really strong deal flow in the industry which is fantastic. So that's one of the hardest things to do in an ecosystem that you're trying to grow is to get that really, really strong deal flow that could be financed. And each of those deals you know I've probably seen most of those deals come with a really strong team of engineers really strong team of business development personnel. A lot of those have kind of spun out from earlier SpaceX employees. There's a flywheel for sure. We're seeing a ton of really, really, really great founders now in the space. So where are we today. Well, the future is certainly different to the past. It would be impossible to think about the growth of venture capital and private equity in the space industry without looking at interest rates and bond deals. So if you are not immediately able to tell what's happening in this graph, I can explain it as the interest rate, I guess low or no interest rates of the last 15 years have pushed the price or the yields of bonds down people trying to attract or chase people to have moved money into higher risk asset classes, and those are predominantly private equity and venture capital. So, why if I'm in the space industry, do I care about this graph. The big the big thing is that I have to look at the industry at the minute and try to figure out one of two things. Is it growing, because there is a really strong fundamental influence of these technologies in the space industry, and the dynamics of the industry are growing from a fundamental perspective, or has there been an allocation of capital to the industry, because it's looking for something such as high yields. That's an important question, because thinking about moving forward. We know that the future is not going to look like this we know that interest rates are higher now than they used to be. Depending on the flavor of economists you speak to. Stay high for a while. And so what does that mean for the space industry moving forward, well understanding the sensitivity of the ecosystem today relative to interest rates is actually really important. Are people investing in the industry because of the really strong fundamentals in which case the industry is very robust to economic impact, or was there capital allocation there because of low interest rates. I think we are really at a very important point in the industry today, because we're, we're going to see in real time. And I think we're starting to see that actually capital is moving quite quickly out of the space industry. And that some of the deals that were maybe done this time last year, or two years ago, would not be done today. I mean, valuation, write offs and drawdowns of 80%. So I think this is something to consider thinking about how to sustain but also grow the industry moving forward. How can we make it more robust. How robust is it today, and what do we need to do to strengthen the space economy. In line with that, what we're seeing today also revising of historical predictions. So, you know, one of the narratives that came out of the last 10 years is that the low cost of launch is going to kind of create this massive number of new industries being created in space, because everyone, everything is going to be launched into space. And actually if you remove Starlink from from that, you see that we have, you know, despite costs of launch being reduced 10x, we've probably only seen a 2x increase in the number of launches again that this is something that we could this data point, we could use to think about what is the size of the industry going to be in 10 years time and 20 years time or even tomorrow. A lot of analysts are revising historical predictions on the size and the speed of growth of the industry. One of my favorite things about what happens last week, if people haven't heard about it is that the FCC in the US launched or find a company for basically not having disposed of their space trash properly. My favorite reaction to that suggests that the government is still very much in the lead when it comes to the growth of the private sector space economy. So I think, you know, over the last few years we have heard again a lot of rhetoric around the fact that venture capitalism private equity private space companies are actually driving the industry. What happened last week shows me very clearly that the government has a it's disposable at its disposal, the ability to direct the movement and the flow of that capital very quickly by indicating very strongly certain policy or certain behavioral dynamics of the industry that it wishes to see. For example, finding space trash is a really good indicator for me that space sustainability is in fact going to be an industry that could potentially generate revenue. If I am an investor I look at that I think great. My portfolio space trash companies is likely to do pretty well. Kind of back to where we started in certain ways. Yes, there has been a massive transition to private sector, but simultaneously, we are still seeing that the government is very much in control of that. So what does that mean for Ireland. As the minister discussed there that that, you know, Irish investing in space is going to continue. I would argue that investing is only one really really small tool that the government has. We've seen the government has many other tools at its disposal that it can use to indicate and to move markets and to to move potentially much higher efficient, higher efficiency capital to different parts of this base economy. The Irish government, you know, being part of the European Space Agency has the ability to use other regulatory and non regulatory tools, not just capital and I think that's going to be probably one of the biggest drivers of the growth of the private space sector, especially if you're up in the next in the next few years. Sorry if that was on. Thank you. That's great. Thanks so much. And so next, I'm going to introduce Peter here to my left. So Peter Smith is the commercial director at Tyndall, where he's responsible for industry engagement strategy and operations. But he's based at the Institute's Dublin office. And he's a chief executive of 30 years experience in the business of technology translation customer needs into commercial return. And before joining Tyndall, he was founder and CEO is a number of tech startups and was an executive of technology IP firms at SEVA. And at the time of its IPO, he's an electronic engineering graduate of my institution DCU and has had senior sales and product management positions while living in Ireland, the UK, the US and Germany. So welcome Peter. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody. And thank you very much for the opportunity. It's my first time also in the building. It's great to be on the panel. So for anyone who doesn't know who Tyndall is the Tyndall National Institute is the National ICT research center. And in scale were about 650 people as a research community and on a growth trajectory to 850 approximately doubling in size actually over the period of the strategy. We've had a long history with the space sector. I think it was last year we celebrated 40 years. Initially starting as the NMRC and becoming Tyndall but that's 40 years of deep technology research and 35 of those have been with the European Space Agency so there's a very great pedigree there. There's a Tindall and other institutions like ours do as part of our remit is talent pipeline development. And there's a really nice story around talent pipeline in that the radiation detectors, which came out of Tindall and are flying on the space station and used at CERN, where the subject of Dr. Anne Kelleher's PhD from Tindall and Dr. Kelleher's now leads all of Intel's global technology development. So it's really, really important that that environment continues that it's well supported that the talent pipeline develops out of the deep technology research. We've also had the consortium for the European Space Agency, ESA BIC, which is a business incubation incubation environment for early stage companies, along with our partners in Manuth University, Novi UCD, and technological university of the Shannon. That's a really important activity as well for us because it brings us into the startup and early stage company development for space technology. We're also very, very interested in the semiconductor landscape so nothing goes to space or operates in space, nothing you do on a daily basis almost can be done without semiconductors so the emergence of the chips acts in the US and Europe is a really significant moment actually very, very significant shift in the strategy around semiconductors so we feel that part of our role is to inform our stakeholders in government or government agencies and work with our European collaboration partners to advance the profile and the strategy development for semiconductors in Europe. So deep technology actually Jane you asked me earlier is what's deep tech it's fundamental advances in science and engineering. And what's really interesting is in space, they go hand in hand right so nothing ever happened in in relation to space development without that fundamental research activity, taking place so it's really important. To recognize that, if you look at all of the technology that is currently dominating space. It started with coms right and let's just be frank about you know satellite comms and sky boxes and all the rest right you know that was the early stage but now look at what it's doing in relation to biodiversity sustainability climate action. So it really is part of our lives in a very serious way and we need to recognize that. It's part of the funding opportunities that exist for for such deep technology. Actually Ireland is pretty good in relation to tapping into the funding opportunities available to the European Space Agency, the EU, and of course, national programs and I would pick out DTIF the disruptive technology innovation in Enterprise Ireland, which is a Department of Enterprise initiative. And that's incredibly important because it ties the supply chain together so you, you can have large multinationals working with small SMEs and that allows the smaller companies to introduce themselves into that value chain. The last thing about deep technology is that we have found that it's very sticky in a commercial sense so it's highly differentiated it's it usually follows five 1015 years of pure research. And that creates differentiated products and therefore what you find is that companies who are involved in the space from startup to scaling does something like an 85% survival rate which is pretty amazing. And that's certainly the case in Ireland and is reflected across the world as well. It's very interesting looking at your graph. One of the things that is very, very obvious is the expansion in the number of patents associated with space technology. So over the last 10 years, there has been phenomenal growth. And that's very positive there are people obviously looking at the opportunities that exist in the space market and taking precautionary measures essentially to to ensure that their technology is protected through patents. And we on then just to mention the importance of policy advocacy strategy. And we have a situation at the moment where in relation to patents, particularly, and there is an initiative to have a unified approach to patents across Europe. And Ireland has been a major supporter of that development of a new court system effectively for patents. And while we have supported it, we haven't yet moved to ratify it. So, government has a really important role to play in relation to ensuring that on the policy side that we follow through and support everything that's required from a strategy perspective and implementing policy for us. I would point out that there's actually a strong policy group across Europe, which was launched last year the, and there is a university or to organization called a RTL or to, and that's a policy and advocacy group for research organizations in Europe. And here a space specific sector broke out from that organization in one of the best branding moves I've ever seen because it's called the astral and dealing specifically with with the space technology. But that's a really important network essentially of all of the technology. The RTLs across Europe, coming together through that activity and tindle is is a founding member of that organization so we try to stay very close to all of that. All of what we do from a strategy perspective from our point of view. I was asked, why does tindle as a research organization have a commercial function. It's because we believe part of our remit is to make sure that the research is translated into value in in in the economy. And on that basis, we're very, very active in that area. And in the question of public versus private. My sense would be that, of course, public investment continues. But most of the private organizations as you said are more or less being funded by the public sector as well in terms of technology development. So I think that they will continue hand in hand. They will expand. We are in Ireland alone were in a position of massive growth over the last 10 years I think if you looked at Irish owned companies operating in the space sector was around 17 or 18. That number is now well over 50. So you've seen more than tripling of the activity of Irish owned space active companies during that period of time. And then finally, there's been a great initiative with the formation of the Irish Space Association. And what that's now doing is providing the private sector focus on the networking required for the value chain, working together from a research perspective a policy perspective and developing the strategy overall. I would probably leave the, the discussion with the, the final remark that when you look at someone like the, the Irish Space Association. It's really, really important that all of the government stakeholders and private industry come together. We're really involved in the minister mentioned the development of the space strategy for industry launched in 2019. That will come to end of life. We have to make sure that there's momentum, we have to make sure that all of the parties are working together to put a strategy in place I think actually that's a third pillar to what government can do. We can provide clear direction through strategy development to in order to ensure essentially that we have a thriving research ecosystem, which is then supporting a thriving industry ecosystem. So, with that I think I said we actually into someone who really is involved in the industry side on the panel. Thanks so much. Very welcome. So yes, our next speaker is Rory Rory Fitzpatrick. He's the CEO of the National Space Center, which is a world class carrier great commercial teleport and Center for Space Research and Development. So Rory is a 20 year veteran of the satellite communications industry and strong component of Ireland's enterprise culture, as well as the ability of the space sector to stimulate economic growth and lead development of space technologies with both space and terrestrial applications. So hopefully you'll tell us more about how we can do that. Well, it's funny listening to the minister early on talking about the intelligence in the room. And it is, it is great fun because the last exam I passed I think was my junior cert so it's kind of, I am usually dealing with people that are a lot more qualified than me, but we're lucky that we've got a great team that are very very good on site. And it's funny like when you look at the industrial side. I was in Ireland when I was 18 and corp was like totally knocked out. There's no work. We all headed away, worked in building sites hotels and everything else. And I got into publishing in the UK and started my own company when I was about 27 and then bought and sold a few companies ended up coming back to Ireland in 97 because I met my wife, and she dragged me back. And I ended up starting getting involved in technology here then. Now that led me to taking over and ending up setting up the National Space Center limited to be very carefully and not a government agency were private company. And we took over and bought the old air teleport down in Middleton. And this was originally set up to transfer telephone data from Europe to America. But it's a very important thing because this is something that had nothing to do with state policy, it was a European initiative to communicate between Europe and America. And we just ended up with it luckily happening in, in Ireland. And now we took it over and we've operated and we've dealt with a lot of the top space companies in the world we've had the utils at SES astra telling our a lot of the big satellite owners operators we've had recently a lot of the Leo operators, and people like SpaceX recently, and we've two other Leo operators on site. And we've got exact earth, rocket labs, leaf space contact. All these are big space companies. And the reason I'm mentioning them is because we were an AI funded company. They supported us 13 years ago, and that got us into the business. And we've more or less made profit for the last out of the last 13 years we've made profit for 10 of those years. And that has been off purely commercial contracts. And that's going out there winning contracts internationally from against mainly the UK would be our biggest competitor. So we're winning contracts against teleports in the UK. And the first thing I had to an actual proper job was the air core. My grandfather wanted me to join the air core when I was young because he was an air core guy. And if I realized how snazzy the uniforms or I might have joined. But but I ended up going into industry in the UK. And, and it's fascinating when you look at your slides are really interesting when you look at the ecosystem. And this is where we come from Irish perspective here. The government can support research and that can lead to interesting spin offs. And like John and myself have been involved in in the industry for 10, well 20 years but 10 13 years in the space sector specifically. And if you look at this, and a lot of the stuff coming down the line. It does go back to government NASA all the original stuff would have been government and when you look at space we think of the moon and Mars and all this kind of stuff. And the reality of most of the industry in space right now is actually sensors looking down. It's military, it's surveillance, it's point to point contact, it's your sat nav in your car. It's your communication systems that you're using the amount of technology that we're getting like the weather report a small thing. When you look at the fast and recent 79 so many people killed such a disaster. Nowadays, it would be really, really, really difficult for that to happen because we've so many sensors up there looking down, we can see the weather weeks in advance. And this is a really, really big deal. We can see title flows we can see heat signatures, the amount of stuff that we're getting the amount of access every single government about it has now from space is phenomenal. And that's where the actual industry in space so when we look at this from a commercial perspective, these companies are making money now people are paying to be on the apps. Those apps are paying the satellite companies the satellite companies are paying the launch companies. So we have a commercial ecosystem that is starting to really turn. And the other thing that's a huge issue in the expanding system right now is the ability to fail. The big difference between government and between private enterprise is we can fail. If NASA are launching. If they fail you have a government inquiry you have everyone dragged up in front of how did it fail you need reports you need witnesses. I was lucky I was asked when shot well, she runs SpaceX. So Musk takes all the credit but she actually operates the company and runs it. And she got inducted into the Hall of Fame in America a couple of years ago. And we were at the thing and she, it was the best presentation I've ever seen. She had the classical bit of music. I forget which song but it was dead. You know this song and rockets exploding 52 rockets exploded in her presentation. Right. And she said the reason we were able to get the two landing together is because we were able to blow up 52 rockets. Now that's an acceleration. Now you look at SpaceX and you look at where we are right now, Ireland. We're really lucky we've a very high technical education due to our establishments or education system. We have really good technology people. We have American companies in here who have all the space companies and a lot of technology, and we have an absolutely exploding space industry. Right now, SpaceX just to give you an idea of the numbers SpaceX have put up 6000 roughly 6000 satellites out of a planet 12,000. And we've got a couple of companies that are launching very shortly that are first two satellites went up last week. We've tell us that after getting funding to put up another fleet of satellites. And that's before we even start looking at the Indians the Chinese the Japanese the Russians, they'll all be putting up their own networks. Most of this is for internet and for internet of things. So this is all commercial hardcore steady business. We can be doing a lot of this with the universities and research with private companies making the money. So the opportunity verny is vast and from government policy. Once we don't end up being on the wrong side of a policy decision or a legislation issue to compete work, we're quits in. We compete an awful lot with teleports all over Europe, our technical staff are better than most our work ethic is better than most our prices while there is a price issue or not the cheapest, we're certainly not the most expensive. And we can liaise and sell and work very, very well with them. We've a good culture for dealing with people. And just to give you an example, I won't name the countries but there's countries in Europe, where our American partners went to install a satellite dish and they were told that they'd worked too many hours that week, and they had to go home. So if an American that you can't work is kind of like, you know, what, not a lot of work. So this is the thing that Ireland has a big advantage structurally over the rest of Europe with, and it's a very big advantage. So I think going forward for us on the commercial side, we've got about three or four projects coming up. There's a couple of big, big issues and you touched on the venture capital. Funding in Ireland is very, very, very difficult. And the reason why is our banking system is small. It doesn't have spare capacity to take flutters. It's generally looking at things from a property based perspective. So unless there's a fixed income and a lot of the funding that is available right now, if you can show that you have a guaranteed income, which means either it's a big huge blue chip American company, or it's a government department, if you can guarantee the feedback in income from that you can get funding. Anything that you can't guarantee forget funding. So it's very, very difficult to get venture capital to get funding into the sector at the moment. You're better off actually chasing contracts and making the money yourself. That's easier than getting funding for the sector at the moment. So I think when you look at the funding European Space Agency funding is fantastic. And it's brilliant at allowing us to develop new technology, new tools and stuff like that. But what it doesn't do is give you operational money. It doesn't allow you roll out. And that's the really big gap Ireland has. I think our challenge, if you look at where we are at the moment, we have a massive amount of foreign direct investment from the States, which really is working very well for the country. That's not going to last indefinitely. At some point, as we harmonize with Europe, the tax will have to harmonize. And that are all our windfall money that we're getting at the moment will be into a European pot instead of into ours. In the meantime, we need to become self sufficient. And that is the big challenge for government here, I think, is to to build infrastructure and build industry here so that it can actually stand on its own when the European stuff changes. So I think from our perspective, we're very excited. We're enjoying what we do. And Ireland is doing an amazing job of punching like the rugby we're punching well above our weight at the moment for the amount of money and population and everything else. And it's, I'm looking forward to this weekend and possibly maybe sneaking to Paris if my wife will let me for the final. Thanks so much, Rory. I think we'll all join you for the final if we can get there. So can I ask first to do any of the panelists of any questions or comments for any of the others anything you'd like to say in response to anybody before we move on. I would like to emphasize something that Rory talked about. So you mentioned spin outs, you know, early stage and that's really, really important. And it works, you know, we can be dynamic. That's, we don't have any of the major primes here right so it's all about actually being swift and dynamic and adapting to the landscape. And we have good, to be honest, we have good government agencies in Enterprise Ireland and IDA as partners to try and make that happen. The ISIF probably has a role to play in that area as well I would say, but I would also say that while we can be dynamic and we can move, it's moving very quickly, right. So I think the lines are being drawn for technology development with this kind and success in the marketplace very, very quickly. And we need to be nimble. We need to follow through and be fast about it. There is one thing on the when we started, we first went to Enterprise Ireland, and it's his retired now but he really helped us in North London bidding Tony McDonald and Barry Fennel. They were instrumental and they were involved in a lot of the first companies in Ireland, as indigenous or space companies. But it takes a long time like from the stuff that they start, it takes a long time for that role to throw. But the biggest single advantage we have, as in with that with Enterprise Ireland as an agency, is that everywhere I went in the world to sell. When I went to California, when I went to New York, when I went everywhere, they'd ring the local office and the local office would get in touch with the key players and line up meetings. It's a thing that we think it's normal because the way we operate, but this is not usual in other countries. They don't do that. This is a really, so for anyone that's interested in starting companies in the space sector, use the network. It's been like gold dust for us. I've hit on a couple of, yeah. I mean, that's generally one of the pros of being Irish, you have an embassy or a pub in every city, not even every city like literally in every township, which I've used a few of. I think, you know, it's nearly impossible to have this conversation without talking about, you know that the elephant in the room, especially when talking about funding. And this week, really, it's has been a difficult one because it really brings it home but you cannot talk about the space industry without talking about the defense industry. That creates tension in Europe because the D word defense is a dirty word. When I sit in board meetings in Europe. And I say the word defense people I see a physical recoil. But space technologies are dual use technologies, you know hypersonic supersonic reentry vehicles. And so one of one of the main reasons why it's so hard. It's not only in Ireland, but I've had conversations with Enterprise Ireland and ISIF or I whatever, and I call them. They cannot under many regulatory frameworks invest in anything that is defense or defense adjacent. So one of the big problems that you actually find in Europe and this is one of the big pieces of work I'm doing at the minute is looking at why is there a lack of venture capital private equity, potentially even pension funds, or institutional investment into space technologies. In 99% of the problem is that asset managers, whether you're a venture capitalist or private equity investor cannot enter the space market because their investors are not allowed to invest in anything that is defense adjacent and I had a long conversation with ISIF about this, is there a way to delineate what does that framework look like and ultimately across Europe a lot of the conversations you'll have will end in we cannot get this through our ESG committee. So it's it's worth noting when we talk about funding gaps. Sometimes the capital is there 99% of the time it's unallocatable to defense adjacent sectors. You know, and you can talk about well, earth, you know earth observation and climate change whatever and it's a yes but emissions defense hypersonics. So, so this is an unresolved conflict in the industry and it's, it's, it's, it is something that needs to be resolved if we want to start bringing early stage investments into the industry especially in Ireland. And I can't see it. Like, if you look, this is a big area for us because we're right on the edge of this. And we have a lot of contracts we could be taken if we did defense. And now I separate Irish defense because we do work with the defense forces, and if we were to work for foreign defense companies. What we have is that first of all we don't have a security care system for private enterprise. Now they're it's in the works, and it's been dealt with. This, this is something that is is a problem sometimes. And but the real problem is that we're not a NATO member. And I can't see this being resolved quickly because while the government are willing to deal with it. There's a commitment to a referendum. And I just don't see a referendum happening in the next five to 10 years, like maybe it'll happen between five and 10 years but that means that we're not going to end up changing a position from partners in peace to NATO. And whether we want to or not and I think there's a national discussion going to happen about that. And there's an awful lot of pressure at the moment, coming from all angles for Ireland to harmonize with Europe and become part of NATO. But our own internal just looking at our internal system I just can't see how we can how that can be dealt with. Until that changes. We can't be part of a lot of the European pro full missions, and on the satellite side. Like, we were looking at one contract where we might open a company in France from the UK to deal with the contract that we had the potential doing and instead it looked at the cost of doing that. So we just left it and but but that's the reality where we are.