Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank our guests for the information they have given to us. I have a couple of questions, one of which is about the aim to proactively assist enterprise workers and the research, development and innovation ecosystem to avail of the opportunity through targeted funding and supports. The report states that increased investment in research, development and innovation would speed up the deployment of Irish offshore wind projects. Can the witnesses provide some information on how this will be achieved? We are unfortunately lagging behind our EU peers in the context of investment in research and development. We are 27th in the in EU in terms of spending on research and development. This is because we spend less than 1% of our GDP and the EU target is 3%. According to the European innovation scoreboard, we are lagging behind leaders in innovation such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden. Similar performance can be observed in the global innovation index, GII, where our position has drifted to 22nd. Are the representatives convinced that the necessary investment will be forthcoming in the research, development and innovation space?