Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome what the Minister has said about prices. When Government representatives make comparisons with consumer prices in the rest of Europe, it drives people up the wall. They are doing their shopping in their local area, not in France or anywhere else. I welcome what he said about getting prices down in a way that is not at the expense of primary producers. We will all be watching what comes out of the meeting today. The horticulturists in my area are very worried. They have particular concerns about energy prices because of the nature of their business. They also have a genuine fear that if retailers are encouraged, let us say, to reduce their prices, the cost of that will be passed on to them. I really welcome the Minister's recognition that prices need to come down, but not at the expense of primary producers.

I have two questions, the first on research, development and innovation and the second on the corporate sustainability directive. The White Paper on enterprise policy states that innovation is the best way to generate sustainable, long-term productivity growth. I agree 100%. However, when we look at the European and global indicators, they show that in some areas, Ireland is drifting in the wrong direction on the innovation score cards. We have moved in the right direction on the European innovation scoreboard, under which we are classed as a strong innovator. That is good. However, we are not yet an innovation leader like countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden. The European scoreboard indicates our performance is at 118.9% of the EU average, but our lead over the average is becoming smaller. On the global innovation index, we have drifted from 12th to 19th place. Under the Institute for Management Development's world competitiveness indicator, we have dropped from seventh to 13th place.

The White Paper focuses significantly on the need for us to improve and become innovation leaders, which is a good ambition to have. I appreciate that research, development and innovation do not come directly within the remit of the Minister's Department. Last year, the budget under this heading for the Department was €255,076,000, which obviously is not the total Government allocation for research, development and innovation. Will he outline what needs to be done to ensure we break into the top echelon of countries according to the various innovation indices, which is where we are aiming to be? As I said, this issue is not directly under his remit but the need for research, development and innovation is heavily referenced in the White Paper. Presuming the target is to improve our score cards, how is it proposed to achieve that? We are doing well on some, which is brilliant, but we are drifting a little on others. The change is not huge but the concern is that if it is not turned around, it could become a huge drift.