Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I generally welcome the Industrial Development (Science Foundation Ireland) (Amendment) Bill 2012. The Bill will formally sanction the foundation's active involvement in applied research. The original Act permitted investment in basic research only. Researchers have some concern as they try to gauge how the Bill will affect their ability to draw down State support for frontier science and I hope the Minister of State will allay the fears of the sector.

The Bill will alter the long-standing restrictions which prevent disbursement of State research funds to a scientist or a scientific research project based outside the jurisdiction. This has meant legislative prohibitions on the Government deciding with its political counterparts in the Northern Assembly to co-fund research, buy equipment or make a joint bid for EU funding which in itself may have involved investing in other institutions. It is advantageous if the high cost of these devices can be shared on a cross-Border basis, with the return being access to advanced equipment. Given that the EU and the United States support cross-Border initiatives, joint funding would probably help leverage additional international support. It would also mean North South groups could in turn join UK or EU-led groups to pursue research.

The planned opening of the seven new research centres is welcome and the sharing of a combined six year budget package of €200 million in State funding and €100 million in support from private sector companies demonstrates a strong commitment by the Government in support of scientific research even at a time of constricted budgets. The envisaged amount of €150 million is sizeable. Science Foundation Ireland expects it will lead to approximately 800 research jobs. Some of these will be filled through the closure or amalgamation of 27 pre-existing research centres, all established over the past ten years. The high-quality research coming from these has helped Ireland build an enviable world reputation for science.

In the new model each of the new centres must involve academic and industrial partners working together. The research pursued must match one or more of the priority search areas identified as valuable to Ireland either in terms of job creation, economic return or societal benefit in areas such as information and communication technology, Internet-based services, the pharmaceutical industry, medical technology and energy. In the IBM global location trends report published in December 2012 Ireland's position as an international investment location was underlined by its top position in a number of significant categories. The country ranked first in the world for inward investment by quality and value, first in Europe for investment in the pharmaceutical sector and second in Europe and fourth globally for the number of investments per capita. These statistics bode very well for our future, which will be dramatically advanced by the Bill enabling Science Foundation Ireland broaden its programme to cover the 14 research priority areas identified by the research prioritisation steering group.

I am glad to see renewable energy is a priority area. We have spent far too long trailing behind Denmark and Germany which have utilised to a huge extent the potential they have in renewable energy. Realistically we are in a much stronger position, at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, where we have the best elements in the world. In many respects we are reneging from the benefits. We could be leaders in this and follow the example shown by continental countries. We are in a much better geographical location to take advantage of it.

In Germany, more people are working in wind energy than in the motor industry, even though they were always to the forefront in car manufacturing. As we know well, Germany is the home of Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, BMW, Opel and Porche.

We have a huge potential to develop our energy capacity. The challenge for this country is to discover how much of our wind capacity we can realistically capture onshore, near-shore and offshore. As Deputy Boyd Barrett said, we should not omit the onshore aspect. The Bill refers to the marine sector but we should amend it to include all aspects and areas where there is a potential to exploit wind capacity. The more we can capture and export such energy, the better our future employment opportunities will be, along with our chances of recovery.

Europe is already struggling, and will do so in future, to provide its energy needs and security targets. Likewise, we need to exploit and develop all 14 areas identified in this Bill to the maximum in order to generate more jobs and expedite our economic progress into the future.

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