Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I am a late substitute for my colleague, Deputy Penrose. In the short time I have had to examine the Bill, it seems it is not one of very great moment. It seems merely to give legislative underpinning to a decision that has already been taken on the change of mandate for SFADCo and a few related technical matters including the raising of the grant thresholds, the bringing of the BMW region into more consistent formation and so on. However, this debate also provides an opportunity to point out that the weakness of the indigenous sector in Ireland is again highlighted in the present crisis.

All the reports from Telesis right up to Ahead of the Curve have highlighted the weaknesses in the indigenous sector and that is nowhere more evident than in the Shannon region. If a major multinational withdraws there is still devastation for the region. We recently saw the incredible damage the decision by Dell has done to employment there. Notwithstanding this being identified back in the 1980s by the Telesis report and a number of reports since then, including the Culliton report and Ahead of the Curve, we still have not managed to build an indigenous sector in this country that one would expect in a modern, European state that has been in the business of industrialisation, albeit coming to it late, for a number of decades.

SFADCo was the first and only attempt at regional development in Ireland. Although there were costs associated with it, it has made a valuable contribution. It probably makes sense to give Enterprise Ireland the role on indigenous industry in that region. Over the years SFADCo went through many changes of mandate and remit and this is only the latest one. The inherent tardiness in our being able to construct a vibrant indigenous sector is still at issue. The Minister of State said the Bill has the support of Enterprise Ireland and SFADCo, therefore I presume that it is no longer an issue in the region. The question is how we make it work.

I have no great issue with the structures and changes set out. However a number of issues arise from what the Minister of State has said. Do we, as he says, have more than 2 million people in work, or has that information come from the word processor before Christmas and does it need to be updated? Has the enterprise stabilisation fund made available any grants yet? Is it operable? The Minister of State claimed the fund will complement the banks' commitment to small and medium sized enterprises under the recapitalisation scheme and should facilitate much of the restructuring that is needed for viable companies selling on the home market. I wonder to what extent the Minister of State and the Department are fooling themselves that SMEs are getting reasonable access to credit lines from the banks.

The Minister of State cannot construct a position on the basis of anecdotal evidence but some of it is very worrying. This week I have been dealing with a small company involved in energy-efficient public lighting and which won two significant contracts, as close to blue-chip contracts as one can get, and intended to employ four more people. However, it required credit of €30,000 for four weeks and was refused by Bank of Ireland. That is not the only case I have come across, and colleagues on all sides of the House have had similar experiences. I do not purport to know everything in all these cases about what might be in the bank files and I acknowledge other considerations must be taken into account but it is disturbing when one sees testimonials to quality and evidence of the contracts, some of which are significant, that small amounts still cannot be accessed by companies such as this, as well as the implications that will have for us in the worsening employment climate.

When he replies I would like the Minister of State to elaborate on the claim that client companies of Enterprise Ireland, EI, chalked up additional export gains of €1 billion in 2008. We are in the hole we are in not only because revenues from the construction sector have fallen out of the system, but because of what has happened to exports for more than five years. When the Minister of State refers to "export gains", does he mean additional value in excess of the €1 billion in 2008?

On the question of his canter over the global economic turmoil and his somewhat tentative confidence that "a number of key projects will be announced by the IDA in the coming three or four months", he seems to suggest that the pipeline has dried up and 2009 will be a particularly baleful year, as many of us have anticipated. I would like him to address this when he replies. He might also take time out to give me the Ladybird guide to the difference between the growth fund and the new stabilisation fund to which he referred because I am not as familiar with this area as I used to be. I am not sure I understand the difference. The latter fund seems to be intended to assist client companies of EI that win export contracts but I do not know if that is the difference between them.

Several times in his contribution, the Minister of State referred to the investment, changes and developments that have happened in research and development in recent years. Research and development helps to anchor companies in the State, which is a valuable and important policy objective. I published the first White Paper ever on science, technology and innovation in 1996. With all due respect to my colleagues at the time, including the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and the Opposition of the day, the amount of attention given to innovation in those days politically or administratively was thin. I welcome what has happened in the interim, particularly the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland, the development of PRTLI, the significance attached to research in our universities and so on. However, what assessment has been conducted over the years of the net value in terms of commercialisation and job creation arising from the significant investment in research? I do not know off the top of my head of any academic assessment of the value for money we are achieving in this area.

I raise this issue because of the focus currently on the initiative by Trinity College, Dublin, and University College, Dublin, and their new alliance. I welcome the direction in which the initiative is going but I am not sure having read reports of the announcement that there is anything new in the initiative other than the co-operation between the two universities but perhaps there is. I was struck that 30,000 jobs were promised in the announcement, although the statement issued subsequently referred to "up to 300 companies and thousands of smart economy-based jobs". The reference to 30,000 jobs is not in the statement. I wonder if there is a reason behind that.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to an article in The Irish Times yesterday written by Dr. John Scanlan, who is described as "the Director of the commercialisation office at NUI Maynooth". The article is relevant to the Bill and to the role that will be given to EI in respect of the Shannon region. Essentially, he called for commercialisation to be put on a par with research. That gear shift is necessary in policy making in this area. He outlined the mission of SFI, which it was founded in 2000 with the aim of "helping build in Ireland research of globally recognised excellence and nationally significant economic importance". He stated the universities have tended to do quite well with the first part of the remit but perhaps less well with the second part. He said traditionally it "was not seen as their role to commercialise that research or to work with companies".

The two university heads referred to the new enterprise corridor between UCD and TCD and the State investing €650 million but I do not what element will be provided by the private sector. In any event, it will be a significant investment of public money. We need to be assured that we are moving in the direction of putting commercialisation on a par with research. There must be a drive in innovation and commercialisation of research to ensure investment is turned into jobs, ultimately, and that is the purpose of the investment. I would welcome the alliance that the two universities have announced if it is a statement of a move towards funding universities directly to engage in commercialisation. It is overdue. Some of the institutes of technology, the former regional technical colleges and the Dublin Institute of Technology, also do valuable work in this area. I am not exactly sure where the new alliance was born. It appears to be less a creation of the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment or her Department than of the Department of the Taoiseach. I presume there are good reasons for that. It is important to get a grip on how we get best value for the significant sums of taxpayers' money we are spending in this area, how the investment in research is commercialised to create jobs, how to spread the money and assess it, what oversight mechanisms are in place and so on.

Dr. Scanlan says that our total research expenditure for 2009 will be approximately €500 million. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, spent approximately €800 million on research in 2008, setting up 20 new companies. We could spin out companies at the rate of one per €20 million compared to MIT at one per €40 million. We all hope that one of the companies spun out will be another Iona Technologies, which came from Trinity College, or another Google, which came from Stanford, both of which Dr. Scanlan mentions. That happens, however, at best once in a decade. This investment will spawn more conventional small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, but is no less important for that and if we get a new Iona or international company, so much the better.

Will the Minister of State tell us in his reply what role he envisages for the Shannon Free Airport Development Company, SFADCo? Has the enterprise stabilisation fund paid out any grants and, if not, when does it intend to commence doing so? Are the export gains a net addition to exports in the previous year, which is a meaning one could take from the Minister of State's script? The Labour Party will support the principle of the Bill although there may be some technical matters to discuss on Committee Stage. Deputy Varadkar made a reasonable point in focusing on the conflict between the project size and approval mandated for some other State agencies and the arrangements we are making here. It has always been accepted, however, in Irish governance that when IDA Ireland comes calling, it gets what it wants. I suppose that, to some degree, is because it has performed well on behalf of the State, but oversight is no less important.

The point about committees is also well made. The raging fury manufactured outside the House about committees has nothing to do with the number of committees. Our friends in the media would be quite happy to see 166 committees here provided the chairperson did not receive a stipend. That is the problem. The mock fury about how many committees there are in the House is manufactured indignation. We need committees that are properly resourced and do their job. Never has that been more relevant than in this case and science investment in particular. People ought to be informed and skilled to do their jobs. In a House of 166 Members, it is probably the case that there are too many committees, but we could focus and resource them better.

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