Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a few items that I will come back to individually.

The Senator asked the reason we look at Denmark, Sweden and Israel. It is because they are comparative countries. They are investing heavily in research and development and they are driving innovation. They are countries with which we are competing and we have to match them and be ahead of them. They are already well on the road to being global innovation leaders. That is where we want to position Ireland. We use some of those countries because the population size is similar to ours, and to show where we should be heading because if we do not get there we will be left behind.