James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take the last question first. I thank the Deputy for his views, which were very helpful. Subhead B15, concerning miscellaneous grants and services, refers to what may not necessarily fit under existing subheads. With regard to healthcare expansion, for example, there is a sum of €2.8 million. There is a sum of €1.45 million in the additional and miscellaneous category. There is provision for various campaigns, such as Building Heroes, an apprenticeship take-up campaign that has had a really positive effect. It also relates to gender balance. There have been some really strong young female apprentices. The programme has been very good. The figures pertain to spending on these kinds of campaigns, including on marketing.

I am providing additional supports to encourage and enable the Traveller and Roma communities to access higher and further education and some learner supports. I am also making provision for some associated digital projects on access, including tertiary access. All of these measures are just under subhead B15.

We all depend on the Department of public expenditure as the paymaster of the Government. Most of what I do, or of what any Minister does, is subject to its approval.

That can be frustrating, difficult and challenging at times. I am not surprised to hear the colleges are going through that. It is correct there would be due diligence and rigour applied, but from speaking to the Minister, Deputy Chambers, I understand there is an intention to maybe streamline some of those toll gates. The public spending code has a number of different gates, as people call them, to pass through and this can mean projects are elongated, complicated and in some cases perhaps do not make it over the final line despite significant merit. My understanding from the Minister is it is his intention to revisit that, while applying the correct rigour, to get projects moving and get them delivered, more importantly, because it really is all about delivery.

The Deputy is absolutely right about the research and innovation piece. I have an ambitious agenda for this space. It is what has cemented our economic success for several decades. We are at risk of falling behind. We have fallen from a position where we were a leader in the area back to being one of the lowest in the OECD or EU tables when it comes to public spending on research and development. We spend perhaps 0.3% or 0.4% of our GDP on it, whereas the EU average is about 0.74%. Small, leading, advanced economies that should be our comparators, the countries we are competing with for investment decisions, prosperity and innovation, are significantly ahead again. We really need to make that leap, and to do that we need significant investment in the area. I intend to bring about a PRTLI-type programme, a successor programme, and I have also engaged the Irish Universities Association on this. It has made a very good case for everything, including equipment renewal. Equipment that was funded under the previous programme 20 years ago is beginning to become obsolete in some cases and some of it is out of use and requires replacement across the board. That is almost business as usual, but I would like to go further to things like quantum computing, AI, digital, renewable energy, semiconductors, healthcare and bioinformatics. There are a huge number of areas where we have the opportunity to be, and remain, world-class and become world leaders. There needs to be a degree of competition about that as well, so we do not just fund projects for the sake of capital funding but actually reward excellence. I mentioned Professor Séamus Davis and the Tyndall institute and the quantum lab at UCC a few minutes ago. We have many more of those who maybe have not put their heads up yet or have not been identified yet and we have the opportunity to identify some really leading-edge centres and people and have them operating out of Ireland. Many of them already are, with significant funding.

On disabilities, the PATH 4 programme looks at students with intellectual disabilities. I recently got Cabinet approval to extend that, including enough funding so 11 more institutions across Ireland can benefit. That is a really impactful programme. Students with intellectual disabilities for the first time ever are able to access a higher education campus. I have visited some of the centres as well.

On the target point, we have to make a decision as a society about whether, if we have limited resources, we target them where they can be most impactful. This means targeting them where they can make the difference, such as for a student entering college or education for the first time ever, perhaps being the first in their family to make that leap which will have transformational consequences for that individual and their family to come, and so on, or by targeting somewhere else and using a broad brush that risks not really pleasing anybody. Perhaps we do a bit of both, but there is a very strong evidence-based case for targeting investment where it has the most impact.