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

This is a point that I have made to the Minister before and it is a serious one. We all want to expand knowledge, see innovation and research to improve our society, develop technology and advance enterprise and industry that is beneficial to society. That is a no-brainer and a noble objective. However, I put it to the Minister that the mechanisms by which we do that, including the knowledge development box and research and development grants with which we will deal later, are largely benefiting a very small cohort of companies. The major objective of those companies is to make money, largely in the IT sector. I am not saying they have not contributed to the advance of technology, and useful technology, but there is a hell of a lot more out there in terms of scientific and technological advance than the small number of social media and IT companies that are dealing with smart technology and are the major beneficiaries of reliefs and grants. We should be carrying out a cost-benefit analysis as to whether the significant amounts of money which, in the main, go to a small group of multinationals would not be better directed into our public universities.

This may be a better time than ever to make the argument in this regard, given Covid-19, because we all now see the value in, for example, research into things such as vaccines and medicines, and across the whole health area. The research capacity of our universities for testing and tracing and of our health system for researching medicines is way below what it should be, faced with the sort of crisis we are in. I seriously suggest that we need to weigh up whether we would be better off giving direct funding to our public universities, health service and so on in the areas of research development and innovation, rather than giving reliefs such as this which benefit a small number of wealthy multinational corporations.