Prince Charles and Camilla to visit Donegal on Wednesday

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla are to visit Donegal on Wednesday as part of a three-day royal visit to Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Prince Charles is beginning his visit with a tour of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) at the Northern Ireland Science Park in Belfast's Titanic quarter today.

He will be joined by the Duchess of Cornwall on Tuesday for a number of engagements in Northern Ireland.

They will both cross the Border on Wednesday.

This second official visit to the Republic by Prince Charles and Camilla follows the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland in May 2011 and President Michael D Higgins's visit to the Britain in April 2014.

The royal couple will travel to Donegal Town where they will visit Magee's, the company which has been producing tweed in the town for 150 years.

They will then travel to the Letterkenny Institute of Technology where Prince Charles will meet local entrepreneurs and learn more about the institute's cross-Border programmes.

The Duchess of Cornwall will visit a local school in Letterkenny.

Glenveagh Castle

They will conclude their visit with a tour of Glenveagh Castle. They will see the gardens and meet children who have been learning about some of the conservation work which takes place in the National Park.

This will be something of a personal moment for Prince Charles - Glenveagh Castle is close to Churchill where his great friend, the late artist Derek Hill, lived for many years.

Prince Charles’s only official engagement on Monday is the visit to ECIT in Belfast’s Titanic quarter.

The royal visit marks ECIT’s elevation to “Global Research Institute” status by Queen’s University and the beginning of an investment and expansion programme which will see numbers working at the centre increase from 180 to 300.

The expansion also will involve the creation of two new research centres – the Centre for Wireless Innovation and the Centre for Data Science and Scalable Analytics Systems.

ECIT is involved in research work in areas such as weather satellites for the European Space Agency, anti- counterfeit technology and systems to reliably monitor patients remotely.

ECIT was established in 2003 and located to the Titanic Quarter the following year, with 70 people from Queen's departments of electronic engineering and computer science moving from the main campus in Belfast.