Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I thank the Minister for her reply, which contains all the appropriate buzzwords, such as innovation, nutritious foods and pharma-foods. However, the reality is that we lag slightly behind Europe and significantly behind the United States and Japan in terms of the percentage of GDP invested in research. In the future, these countries will be important competitors. What actions may be taken to ensure more investment in research and development, particularly in the food area?

It is important that there is interest and investment by the food industry in food research, and that should be encouraged and promoted. I am concerned to ensure such valuable research becomes widely available and is not contained within the food company. A broad and widely available research base should exist for research programmes.

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