Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I hope I can respond positively to all the ideas that were put forward. I acknowledge the contribution by Members to the debate on the past two evenings. Members have been generally constructive in their comments to date.

I wish to put on record press releases from the IDA which outline certain examples of foreign direct investments made in the past two weeks. On 26 September the headline read "Twitter to establish international office in Ireland". On 22 September, the headline read "MSD opens new €100m R&D centre in Tipperary". On 21 September the headline read "arvato Finance marks 15 year anniversary with ambitious growth plans". On 20 September the headline read "Pfizer invests €200m in its Grange Castle biotech site". On 20 September the headline read "HCL Technologies establishes Software Delivery Centre in Dublin". On 16 September the headline read "The Coca-Cola Company opens new manufacturing and innovation facility in Wexford." I only put those on the record because they are examples of success in attracting foreign direct investment.

As Minister of State with responsibility for research and innovation, we are currently engaged in a research prioritisation exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to narrow down key elements of areas of research so we can continue to attract that kind of FDI in order that we can ensure we have a platform for the basic research and applied research and that the level of collaboration between industry and academia is deepened so we can ensure we can continue on that platform and to put us even higher up the global rankings in research and innovation. No party or Government should claim for itself this evolutionary process which has been put in place since 1996 by various parties. It is only successful because of the fact that we have organisations such as Enterprise Ireland, the IDA, Science Foundation Ireland and Forfás which have the level of expertise to pitch to a market and attract the type of companies we need.

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