Hildegarde Naughton (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. This five-year strategy has been broadly welcomed by all stakeholders involved in research, teaching and industry. As has rightly been said, it is ambitious and without ambition progress is rarely made. As Fine Gael spokesperson on jobs, enterprise and innovation, I warmly welcome any policy that seeks to advance Ireland as an innovation hub. If this strategy is handled in the same way as the Action Plan for Jobs, I have no doubt it will bear fruit and that we will see its success across the country.

As Science Foundation Ireland has indicated, this innovation plan is a key element of the Government's overall jobs strategy, aimed at building a new economy based on exports and enterprise and delivering full employment on a sustainable basis. The strategy is aimed at building on the significant successes delivered by the Government's science strategy in the past decade, which has seen Ireland dramatically improve its performance globally in this area. The next phase of the strategy is aimed at building on existing infrastructure and achieving ambitious private-public collaborations.

A key ambition of the strategy is to increase total investment in research and development in Ireland, led by the private sector, to 2.5% of GNP. On current official projections, this means that more than €5 billion will be invested per year in research and development by the private and public sectors by 2020. This will represent almost a doubling of current levels of investment.

Among the other ambitious targets the Minister of State mentioned are: the number of research personnel in enterprise to increase by 60% to 40,000; research masters and PhD enrolments will be increased by 30% to 2,250; private investment in research and development performed in the public research system will be doubled; there will be a 40% increase in the share of PhD researchers transferring from SFI research teams to industry; Ireland's participation in international research organisations will be expanded; the network of centres will be further developed, building critical mass and addressing enterprise needs; a successor to the programme for research in third level institutions will be rolled out to include investment in the creation of new facilities, the maintenance and upgrading of existing facilities and equipment and ensure their full utilisation; and funding of €1.25 billion under the EU framework programme Horizon 2020 will be drawn down. These are just a few of the overall ambitious targets set and are most welcome.

I have a few queries about the strategy that I wish to bring to the Minister of State's attention. Perhaps he might keep them in mind as the strategy is reviewed on an ongoing basis. The first issue is Irish patent activity. According to the State's own figures, there was a rise in patenting activity until 2006, after which it hit a plateau. Our patenting rate seems to be lower than in those countries with which we find ourselves in competition. Perhaps the Minister of State might investigate ways by which our levels of patenting could be increased. The strategy is a little silent on the issue which could be constructively pursued.

This is more of a general comment rather than any criticism. Our ranking as an innovation hub largely depends on foreign multinationals rather than indigenous companies. As an example, on the 2014 EU industrial research and development investment scoreboard ranking of the top 1,000 EU companies, the Irish list shows that Seagate was ranked 59 and spent €889 million, while Accenture spent €518.5 million. Of the big indigenous Irish groups, the Kerry Group was ranked 154 with a spend of €158.2 million, while Glanbia was ranked 590 with a small spend of €17.7 million. There is a significant gap between the spend by foreign multinationals and that of domestic groups. While Ireland is viewed very positively by foreign multinationals, which is good, I would like to see greater emphasis on increasing the prominence of indigenous groups as we roll out the strategy.

I commend the Minister of State and his departmental officials for their excellent work on job creation since the Government came to power. We are really seeing the benefits of it now and it is important that that work should continue. The strategy is an essential part of it.