Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I take the point. We have deliberately set out targets and increased the targets for engagement by the SME sector in Horizon 2020. The subject of today's committee meeting is the upcoming Competitiveness Council. The challenge, as Deputy Áine Collins said, is to engage the SME sector. There are people who come into our offices who have had no formal engagement, who have great ideas and who want a pathway for the idea so that they can monetise it, commercialise it and get it to the market. The local enterprise offices should present an opportunity in that regard. More outreach must be done by academic institutions. There must be greater flexibility by academic institutions where there are technology transfer offices or centres of innovation, such as the Rubicon or NIMBUS centres in Cork. There is an open-door policy in those centres and we must break down the filtration system between the citizen who has the idea and the academic institution. There should be a more flexible approach. I agree with the Deputy in that regard. I strongly argue that it can be done once the local enterprise office is up and running. From a regional perspective, the local enterprise office will naturally map onto the existing structure because of the service level agreement within Enterprise Ireland, which has an engagement with academic institutions. That should present an opportunity to people so that they do not get bogged down and they have the confidence to come in when they have an idea. Tyres can be kicked and innovation vouchers can be applied to the ideas. Someone from the research community can engage with the person. The success of this will be predicated on how many innovation vouchers become companies or tradeable or commercialised licences. We have some way to go in this country. I take the point being made.

Deputy Áine Collins referred to the University of Maryland. Ireland is a small country. Globally speaking, we are punching above our weight on the innovation index. There is a tendency for Irish people to be self-congratulatory. However, looking at the objective metrics, we have a large FDI presence, with parent companies and people on-site in Ireland. Invariably, the leaders of teams are Irish people who have come up through the corporate structure. Those Irish people are allowing us to leverage opportunities with academia. It is not every day that industry will come up with €100 million in hard cash or contributions in kind and marry it with an investment from the State. We will never compete with the United States because it can fund through philanthropy and a whole realm of funding mechanisms, including blue-sky research. We must specialise and we must be smart about where we invest. We have collaborated with industry and we have developed a set of areas we can fund, which will deliver for the economy. I take the point made by the Deputy.