Jimmy Devins (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to address the House this evening. There are two issues I would like to talk about, which were raised last night. I want to deal with the national skills strategy, and I will also explain to the House the elements of our innovation strategy. The safeguarding of Ireland's competitiveness and future prosperity requires us to maintain advantage over our competitors in a number of vital areas. The skills and competencies level of our labour force is one such area. This Government firmly believes that our future success can only be guaranteed by continuing our policy of investing in our education and training systems.

With free primary, secondary and third level education, combined with significant Government investment in vocational education and training, Ireland is well placed to take her place on the world stage as a star performer in the global knowledge economy. We are continuing to produce highly educated and skilled individuals. We will ensure that we have a labour force with the ability to meet the needs of enterprises and, more important, that will allow Ireland to respond quickly to emerging opportunities in the future. In other words, we must create and develop competitive advantage in terms of the skills and qualifications of our labour force. This will be key to maintaining our success and will allow us to continue to compete in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. Lifelong learning will therefore play a key role in enabling Ireland to remain competitive in the future. Compared with other countries, participation by adults in education and training is still significantly underdeveloped here.

Greater participation in lifelong learning by facilitating and motivating people to increase their skill levels and qualifications will be promoted and encouraged. Key to achieving this goal is the national skills strategy. To underpin long-term competitiveness our objective is to ensure that we build up the productive capacity of the economy through investing in people. This is being achieved directly through the science, technology and innovation strategy and through our skills strategy.

The national skills strategy was published in March 2007 and was completed by the expert group on future skills needs in response to the Government's request for the group to undertake a comprehensive analysis of Ireland's labour market and skills needs to the year 2020. The results of the analysis contain an ambitious vision for the skills profile in Ireland in 2020. It shows that if we are to progress ahead of our competitors then we need to increase our focus on skills development at a number of levels. We need to upskill by at least one level on the national framework of qualifications an additional 500,000 people by 2020. The strategy clearly shows that the majority of these people, in excess of 330,000, are currently considered to be low skilled. The implementation of the vision needs to have a special focus on the low skilled. In this way our workforce will have the skills to compete globally for jobs and investment. The national skills strategy has helped us to target specific skills and sectors that will become increasingly important in the next few years. It has allowed us to identify and address specific gaps in our skills base. It will help us to build an education and training system that will allow us to adapt and respond quickly to the changing global business environment.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the labour force is characterised by progressively improved skill levels reflecting the changing business needs of the labour market. An interdepartmental committee chaired by the Minister of State with responsibility for lifelong learning, Deputy Seán Haughey, will complete an implementation plan for the national skills strategy by the end of this year. This implementation plan will examine the existing provision of education and training and determine the key initiatives required to achieve the objectives of the national skills strategy.

Our future competitiveness and success as an economy and a society rest within our own hands. Targeting our investment in education and training to achieve the objectives of the national skills strategy will provide Ireland with competitive advantage in the key area of skills. Ireland's workforce will continue to be the basis of our success. I have the utmost confidence in the ability of our workforce to compete successfully with the best in the world.

Our knowledge economy ambitions have to be underpinned by flexible ways of doing and organising business and how we innovate in all sectors of the economy. We are examining several ways of fostering an innovation culture in the economy and in society. In leading innovative countries, almost every policy domain is connected to innovation. It is therefore essential that we continue to maintain the best possible conditions across all policy spheres for supporting and sustaining innovation. We recently launched our innovation policy statement, Innovation in Ireland, which reinforces our efforts to create a framework for increasing innovation in the economy. The statement maps our progress across ten key policy areas and identifies opportunities where innovation can be better exploited.

My Department is currently working in key areas including the strategy for science, technology and innovation; research and development; and public procurement and services. The first report on the implementation of the strategy for science, technology and innovation, 2006-2013, will be published tomorrow. This report illustrates the success of the strategy to date. The first report shows that total research and development spending has almost trebled over ten years. Ireland's total expenditure on research and development had risen to 1.56% of GNP at end 2006. Higher education research and development spending has almost quadrupled in current terms over ten years and is now at the EU and OECD average levels. This increased investment in the higher education sector is having a significant impact in terms of human capital development, leading to the attraction of foreign direct investment and commercialisation. This is paralleled by equally dynamic growth in business sector research and development which has risen to an estimated €1.56 billion in 2006, a 17% increase on the previous year. Over the lifetime of the strategy, as Government investment in public sector research increases, it is a key objective to retain our two to one ratio of private to public sector investment.

Enterprise Ireland and IDA continue to work closely with companies to strengthen the research and technological base of the enterprise sector. The strategic infrastructure investment of the programme for research in third level institutions and increased PhD output, combined with Science Foundation Ireland's success in growing our human capital at the highest level, adding more than 30 world class principal investigator teams each year, and our success in connecting funded research teams with industry are together transforming what Ireland has to offer.

Collaboration between SFI researchers and industry has increased significantly. Science Foundation Ireland's centres for science, engineering and technology, known as CSETS, have engaged with a wide range of industrial and other partners. The growing bank of researcher talent, coupled with the enhanced research and development tax credit, is a major factor for the IDA in attracting blue chip foreign direct investment and research and development into Ireland. This has resulted in a series of significant industrial and academic research collaborations. It is particularly welcome that as many as 40% of the 114 new projects negotiated by the IDA in 2007 were research and development investments.

Positive trends are also evident in early stage commercialisation. The number of real start-ups from the research investment has increased from five in 2005 to 13 in 2007; licences have tripled in number from 15 in 2003 to 55 in 2007; invention disclosures have grown from 135 in 2005 to 264 in 2007; incubator employment has gone from 135 in 2005 to 264 in 2007. While Ireland is still a relative newcomer to significant investment in research and development, the trends are very positive in light of the time lags that exist between investments and eventual outcomes.

The remit of Science Foundation Ireland was expanded from ICT and biotechnology to include the broad thematic area of sustainable energy and energy efficient technologies. A range of measures is supported by Enterprise Ireland to develop collaborative links between industry and academic researchers. These include innovation vouchers, innovation partnerships, industry-led research networks and competence centres.

The strategy supports a strategic and coherent approach to developing science teaching in primary and second level education, through the programmes piloted by Discover Science and Engineering, run in close co-operation with the curriculum support services. The overall objectives of Discover Science and Engineering are to increase the number of students studying the physical sciences and to promote a positive attitude to careers in science, engineering and technology. A major international review of DSE's work in this area has just been completed.

Good progress is being made in supporting and developing North-South co-operation in research and development via a North-South innovation fund. An early win has been the agreement of an all-island innovation voucher scheme last month and SFI has developed a dedicated support mechanism to encourage researchers from the North to connect with SFI-funded researchers.

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