Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We are doing a metrics paper at present and will bring it to Cabinet. This will give the Deputy the context of metrics and how patents map onto it - or not, as the case may be. The question one must ask oneself is whether patents are an accurate measure of economic activity. What long-term effect do they have in terms of creating jobs, etc.? Of themselves, as intellectual property, patents are important in terms of protecting the good ideas and the new innovations people develop. What we have sought to do from the research perspective, and are doing, is to bring a paper to Cabinet. The Minister has a strong input in this regard. Its purpose is to ensure that wherever the State invests, through all the funders of research, for example, the HEA, Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board and all the other State funders, it will map out or measure the impact of that research funding. That is measured in terms of publications and in the numbers of jobs created. One tries to measure the societal impact by looking at indicators such as the European Union innovation index, and so on. There are metrics around publications of papers, etc. The key point is that we are ensuring that where we are investing we have a set of criteria laid down such that the metrics have to be measured in terms of the impact and the number of jobs created. As that is done it informs our approach.

I refer to the SFI centres.