Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In order to put Deputy Calleary's mind at ease, I wish to state that following the commencement of the Industrial Development (Forfás Dissolution) Act 2014 on 1 August 2014, Forfás's policy functions have been integrated within the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. The policy research and advisory functions of Forfás have transferred in totality to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and form the core of its strategic policy division. The former staff of Forfás, together with a number of existing staff from the Department, form the core of this newly-created division. A very strong unit has been developed as a result. The objective of integrating Forfás with the Department's existing resources is to further enhance the formulation and development of national enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation policy. The integration is ensuring that the best available resources of the Department and Forfás will be collectively harnessed and focused on evaluating, designing and executing an ambitious enterprise and jobs strategies, at this pivotal time in economic and enterprise development.

The key elements of the role of the strategic policy division include the areas of enterprise policy, competitiveness, the enterprise aspects of tax policy, education, skills and labour market analysis and economic infrastructure. It also provides research support in the Department in respect of the areas of trade, innovation and climate change, together with economic and data analysis generally. The survey activity previously carried out by Forfás, which provides a key element of the policy research capability, is now being undertaken by the strategic policy division. The research budgets associated with the former Forfás policy activities continue to be available within the Department. When the legislation was debated in the House, the Deputy was concerned that the research budget would disappear. However, that has not proven to be the case and the relevant moneys are being spent on good research.

The strategic policy division is co-ordinating the development of the Action Plan for Jobs 2015 within the Department and is working with other Departments towards achieving the Government’s objective of the creation of 100,000 jobs by 2016. The division is also leading or contributing to a number of specific policy reviews and evaluations under way in the Department including enterprise policy to 2025, in growth areas of opportunity such as intellectual property management, big data and smart ageing, and to the reviews of our strategy for science, technology and innovation to 2020 and also the review of the Department's statement of strategy for the next three years. The Deputy will be aware that the science strategy document was for the period up to 2013 and it is important that we get a new strategy up and running. We are currently working on a new document in this regard.

The Deputy will be aware that the science strategy ran its course in 2013. The strategy document is important and it is important that we get up and running in this regard. We are currently doing a lot of work on that.

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