Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I endorse the Minister of State's remarks about SFI. It is doing a superb job and its research centres are excellent. To drill down into those statistics the Minister of State quoted, foreign-owned enterprises are responsible for 70% of research and development expenditure in the country. That means Irish indigenous companies are far behind the curve when it comes to research and development expenditure. Almost three quarters of the total expenditure on in-house research and development was by companies with more than 50 employees.

Some of the work that SFI is doing with small companies is excellent. No doubt small companies are the nucleus of much amazing research and development work, but either we are not engaging with traditional small companies directly to get them onto this agenda or we are failing in bringing the benefits of Horizon 2020 and the research and development programme to SMEs. What kind of partnerships would the Minister of State envisage for organisations, such as the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, the Small Firms Association and, in particular, the local enterprise offices, to bring them to the stage where research and development is the future? We have had a lot of regional discussion here this morning. Perhaps there are companies in that county or some of those towns which could be getting involved in research and development to create employment.

See this speech in context