Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

I have been saying for the evening that I would expect it would be the majority. I think I did make reference to the companies that have more than 250 people working within them as being the ones that are most likely to benefit from this and are also the same companies that are inside pillar 2. To assure the Deputy and the committee, there is not an additional pool of information that I am not making available to them.

On the language that was being used about this being a tax break, I am not going quibble on the use of language, but this is one of the most valuable and strategically important tax credits that we have available. The very large companies that we have all referred to this evening are very large employers and are very large taxpayers within our State. I am satisfied, in bringing forward this measure, that it represents good use of the money that is available to me for tax measures and will be supportive in the long run of economic development and research and development within our country. That is the case that I am making to the committee here tonight.

In relation to the points that have been to put to me there regarding the need for the public sector to play role in that, I will put some figures out there regarding it and point to some policy decisions that I took in relation to this to make progress on the integration between the public and private sector. We have made reference to the €1.14 billion that is going through the Department of further and higher education. That is a lower figure than the €1.4 billion. That is the last known figure for the value of the R and D tax credit. The decisions that the Minister, Deputy Lawless, is going to make on the allocation of the National Training Fund surplus are big decisions. He will be allocating a lot of funding in the coming years in regard to that. I cannot recall what the exact figure is for the surplus that is available within the National Training Fund at the moment, but it is in excess of €1 billion over a number of years. He will be making a decision on the allocation of considerable resources. Through the Finance Act 2019, we provided for an increase, from 5% to 15%, to the R and D outsourcing limit on expenditure to universities or institutes of higher and further education.

That was to try to facilitate better integration between the public and private sector with regard to research. I am aware of the figures that Deputy O'Callaghan referred to, noting that the amount of money we invest in research and development in public terms as a share of our national income is not what it should be and does not always compare well with our peers. I also want to tell the committee that in 2022, the last year for which we have figures available to us, there were 10.9 researchers for every 10,000 people in employment. That figure compares to 9.7 for the EU 27 and 9.9 for the OECD average. There is investment going on but I accept we need to grow the investments we have in research through our universities and not just for commercial purposes, as research and innovation has an intrinsic good the taxpayer should be supporting, although that commercial benefit is real.