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

Yes, but these points are being made, so for the record, I want to see more money being put into research and development. I do not want to see more money being put into the pockets of those 200 companies because they have enough.

I will make the point, when we consider all of this in the round, that there should be a general acceptance that our economy, and economic and industrial model is now very vulnerable to its over-reliance on a relatively small number of companies in a small number of sectors. I think pouring all of this public money into that same small group of companies is a mistake. We should be trying to significantly diversify our industrial base and research and development. What we are seeing is heavy concentration, and the Government is trying to maintain that concentration. I will make a larger point in terms of the relationship between the public universities and private industry in general. If you delve not too deeply into the origins of the success of some of that small group of big companies, you will find they have benefited enormously from the talent produced through public investment. Often the actual innovations and developments they commercialised were developments and innovations that came out of the public university or the State system. I am just saying.