Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials. The committee had the chance to spend some time in Brussels at the beginning of the year. One of our meetings was with the directorate general driving Horizon 2020. It was effusive in its praise for the Minister of State and the officials who had been handling our Horizon 2020 applications for EU funding. It is important that we acknowledge this. I also welcome the Minister of State's acknowledgement that the architecture for much of the investment was put in place by previous Governments. Some good things were done in that time.

Given the level of investment in research and development and science in recent years, is the Minister of State satisfied that we are maximising job creation opportunities? They will not appear overnight, but will the Minister of State provide a brief overview of the situation?

The Minister of State mentioned that in terms of indicators of innovation output, we were ranked third, that we were investing smartly and that our investment was delivering jobs, yet the number of patent applications last year was at a 30-year low. Is there a gap between the research and its commercialisation?

The Minister of State referenced the IDA's figures of 7,071 net jobs and 164 new investments. Only 27 of the latter are specifically in the field of research, development and innovation. The jobs in the Googles and Facebooks are in sales or marketing. Will we land an actual research and development centre, the heartbeat of innovation? Microsoft's research and development centres are not based in Ireland, but in Israel, China and India. We share the Minister of State's ambition for Ireland to be a driver of innovation. What plans has he in place to see this done?

The Minister of State cited €300 million in State-industry co-funded research, comprising €200 million in Exchequer funding and €100 million from 156 partners. Is the €300 million locked down and in place and has it been ring-fenced?

We have very ambitious targets under Horizon 2020, for example, €1.25 billion. This is welcome. Is a roadmap in place? Is the Minister of State confident that, come 2020, we will have exceeded that target? How much of the €1.25 billion will be spent on innovation, research and development, that is, real research, as opposed to salaries for academics and programme managers and buildings?