Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Government's approach to the task force seems to have all the lack of urgency that is so typical of this Government. The idea of an innovation task force was announced by the Government in December 2008 with great fanfare in Dublin Castle to introduce the Government's plans for a smart economy. It took all of six months to get the task force set up, and it was not set up until June of last year. The last time the Taoiseach answered questions in the House about this task force, he told us it would report early in the new year. This is early in the new year and I see now it will meet again at the end of January and the report will be sometime after that. Meanwhile, there are 423,595 people on the live register, 84,000 of whom are under 25, many of them the kind of young people who are emigrating and who we would expect should be working in the smart economy, if we had one.

Has this task force made any recommendation to date to Government in respect of any measure that the Government might have taken to advance the smart economy and innovation in this country? Was any specific recommendation made to Government in advance of the recent budget, for example, which might have informed the provisions of that budget, or lack of them, in respect of measures to generate employment? Is it envisaged that this task force will make any recommendation or have any report made to Government before the Finance Bill so that any measures that are contained in it in respect of start-up capital incentives and so on might be included in the Bill?

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