Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 13:

In page 11, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following:

“(c) the implementation of any funding schemes for research designed to improve innovation within the public service.”.

This amendment is to try to encourage, as much as possible, public sector research on innovation in the sense of trying to improve and be of benefit to the wider public service. We know this is a crucially important thing that can only be of benefit to the wider public service. In the EU's recent innovation scoreboard, this was highlighted as an area where significant headway needs to be made and that is the reason for this amendment. We want to see as ambitious an approach as possible when it comes to the likes of STEM and AHSS research. With regard to the former, there is a significant job of work that can be done. Obviously as times change and technolgies change, this could really be of benefit be it within our healthcare system, building manufacturing and all that kind of thing. There is also the likes of the public registries such as the CRO and the Land Registry where we could look at modernising those databases. That could be something we could look at so they could be more user-friendly, transparent and freely available. That is the thinking behind that particular amendment.