Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister did not revert to the issue of research in universities and the bang for the buck that we derive from encouraging research and development through these allowances for private companies and, as has been said, the small number of big corporations that benefit from it. It seems to amount to the privatisation of research and development. The funding of our universities was hammered during the period of austerity. They lost approximately 30% of their funding. Would it not be better, rather than have this huge tax expenditure on research and development tax credits, to put more money back into our universities? Should we not at least examine which would be more beneficial to our economy and our society and examine whether this is a good tax expenditure?