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

I made the point yesterday that the research and development tax credit involves such a substantial amount of public expenditure that an analysis of the benefit to society is required. Perhaps the Minister can give us the latest figures on what is projected for this year in terms of this tax credit but my understanding is that it is approximately €700 million and that has been rising in recent years. That money is going to private companies and I suspect, largely, to very big and profitable companies. It seems to me that there is a trade off between expenditure going to those companies whose research and development is focused on increasing their profitability or, alternatively, to our public universities to do research and development that is geared towards societal objectives, that is, things that we as a society decide are important. We should remember that our universities are very significantly underfunded. There is not enough money going into research at third level and many of the people working in third level education have very poor wages and conditions of employment. Many are on temporary contracts and so on. A lot of investment is needed in higher education and in research in our universities. The money that is currently going to private companies through the research and development tax credit would be better spent on our universities. At the very least, we should examine that question and look at it closely to see if there would be more benefit in doing that rather than handing out vast sums of money to a relatively small coterie of profit driven corporations.