Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I do not think I will take all of my seven minutes, as I have to speak in the Chamber. I apologise for that. I have one question about research, development and innovation, RDI. Committee members will have heard me ask this a million times because it is something I am very exercised by. We know that a lot of analysis goes on and countries shift around. We are moving in the right direction on the innovation scorecard. We are strong innovators, but not yet an innovation leader. On the Global Innovation Index we have drifted from 12th to 19th and on the Institute for Management Development, IMD, world competitiveness indicator we have gone from seventh to 13th.

I understand that the entire area of RDI does not fall within the remit of the witnesses but the budget it had was more than €255 million for last year. I want to ask about the innovation voucher scheme and whether the witnesses see the need to increase funding for the scheme. The rates have not been increased since it was introduced, which seems a little bit odd to me. Has the Department given consideration to using the innovation voucher scheme as a kind of mechanism or funnel to get SMEs into the kind of research and development pipeline, and that will help them improve in terms of productivity?