Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Senator has gone now but I wish to clarify. Research has been reclassified from current to capital owing to a change in the EU accounting rules. Under the US accounting rules for many years, research was regarded as a capital spend because it gives a return over a long period of time. We did not in Europe. We counted it as current spend. That has been changed and now our budgets across all Departments reflect it as capital spend. I can assure the committee the €37 million is money well spent and more is requested. Money spent on research, development and innovation is something the Government is driving across many Departments.

The total taxpayer spend on research and development will be close to €800 million. We want to get it back over €1 billion. Our commitment is for 2.5% of GDP. There is a range of programmes funded through higher education along with other Departments. It is very much about future-proofing the economy. Money spent on research and development now is about developing talent for the future so that people can work in public research systems and also take up jobs in new companies and so on. We know from our research that the companies that get involved with the education system and that spend money on research and development are the companies that are growing faster and exporting more. They are the companies developing new policies and ideas, and taking on new people. So it is all part of the future-proofing of the economy. We would like to have much more than €37 million in this regard if we could.

I hope over time we will have more. It is well spent and well tracked.

We are developing a new science strategy in which all of the Departments are involved which we hope to announce in November. This will include new ways to fund research and to have competitive funding among all the disciplines. Various disciplines have probably often raised this is a concern with committee members, as they may have felt that in recent years it has been more difficult to obtain money. It is because there was less money. It is as simple as that. We are making it very clear in the new strategy that all of the disciplines will have access to competitive funding and various other moneys. There will also be new ways to track this money because it is a concern when we spend a lot of money as to how we can track and follow it and measure the outputs. This is dealt with quite well through our agencies, including the Irish Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland. We want to be able to improve this and make it clear to all involved that the money is well spent. I guarantee it gives a return to the country, but we need to be able to track this and prove it.

The further education and training budget is under skills development in programme B. The further education and training strategy sets out that it must become a pillar, as we want to give it recognition as best we can. It has a major contribution to make to skills development in the country. Every company says there is a shortage of talent and we are in the middle of a talent war. Skills development and closing the skills gap will only be achieved through a blend of higher education and further education and training. The Department is trying to recognise this, and the various strategies clarify this and give credence to it, and it is a case of how we can push the agenda. Eventually the funding will be increased but it must become more responsive to enterprise needs. This happens through further education and training because of apprenticeships, traineeships and the various schemes in colleges of further education which work with enterprise and community needs and respond to them. We need to be able to match this with funding.

Several committee members have raised the issue of school buses and what happens when the number falls below ten. The threshold was seven and this was raised to ten through changes made a number of years ago. There must be a cut-off point at some stage, such as three, two or five people, whereby running a bus becomes an inefficient way of spending taxpayers' money. The ideal number picked at the time was ten.