John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is one of the reasons we have focused a lot of time, money and effort on collaborating with multinational, foreign direct investment industries. I will give an example of that. If one went back 15 or 20 years and looked at the collaboration of our universities, institutes of technology and research and development interests with big multinational companies, one would discover that there was very little. It is now acknowledged by many of the big multinational, foreign direct investment companies - which would be used to and committed to carrying out their research at base - that they recognise not Ireland's potential but that which we already have here in terms of our scientists, researchers and developers. There are also our buildings - our 17 dedicated research centres. I have visited many industries that collaborate with our universities and with our institutes of technology. They acknowledge that the investment in research and development in Ireland is a big factor in them investing here. Could we have been doing this 15 or 20 years ago? Absolutely. Deputies Donnelly and Lawless would know this. There is no question that we are way behind Germany and some of the bigger countries.