Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

Under the chairmanship of the Minister of State, Deputy Lenihan, a process was undertaken to examine the overall spending on science, technology and innovation in all Departments. On that basis, we saw a 7% overall reduction targeted at the commercialisation aspects and the potential of that spend. One of the issues raised 18 months ago was how we can provide a metric to see that. Under the chairmanship of Mr. Lionel Alexander we set down a number of parameters in which this could be achieved. That work is now being done. With ten years of investment in science, technology and innovation we are behind some other countries. On that basis we frontloaded much of the spend. We will also continue to invest in working with EU programmes in the delivery and drawdown of further expenditure.

The task at hand is to embed the technology and use the expertise we have to commercialise. That is the focus of State enterprises. In the spend for foreign direct investment purposes through IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland we have seen a seismic change in where people are investing. It is moving towards research and development. That is where the jobs are. Creating opportunities for that commercialisation is strategic in what Enterprise Ireland is doing in supporting new ideas and concepts and bringing those to market.

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