Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

It was a very wise choice by the Taoiseach. As somebody who was chairman of the Oireachtas committee dealing with enterprise, trade and small business for four and a half years as a Dáil Deputy, I look forward to working with the Minister of State in this area and helping him and his officials. I had the privilege and honour of accompanying the Minister of the day and the Taoiseach on many promotional trips and efforts to see what the future would hold for Ireland in general.

We are told Ireland's future prosperity depends on being able to adapt and we are also told that our aim nationally must be to build and maintain a world class knowledge-based economy and society. Equally, we must have effective means of ensuring the creation, protection, commercialisation and profitable use of intellectual property.

I welcome the Minister of State's contribution which stated:

In the field of copyright, there are proposals in discussion at Council working party level to amend Directive 2006/116/EC on the term of protection of copyright and related rights for performers and record companies. The central element of those opening proposals would be to extend the length of copyright protection for performers and producers from 50 to 95 years.

I fully support this as people are living much longer. This has the wide support of very many of our EU colleagues.

The Minister of State also indicated:

The Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 provides the main legislative provisions governing the protection of copyright in this State. The Act is a comprehensive item of legislation which provided — in some cases, for the first time in Irish law — for moral rights, performers' rights, rights in performances, a database right for non-original databases and for rights and remedies against those who unlawfully circumvent technological protection measures designed to protect copyright materials. The Act's 376 sections provide a coherent legislative regime that conforms to the best standard of international practice in this area. It has regularly been acknowledged as a good legislative model.

That has stood us in great stead, especially with regard to the computer industry where software and various innovations and creations have been put to such good use.

In considering our young population of boys and girls and the high-end jobs that we are now aiming to provide for them, we must now excel in this area for the future. Up to now we have had the 12.5% corporation tax rate, which has been a significant advantage in attracting multinationals. They have had a destination where they could make a reasonable profit while employing up to 100,000 people. The American multinationals include Intel, Hewlett Packard and other great companies in Ireland.

Where will Ireland go to attract inward investment for the next 25 years for the next generation? I suggest that we should be known in future as "Ireland, the innovation island of Europe". To have the ability to achieve that, I suggest we look at a particular model. If we look back through the generations, the big success story in Ireland over the past 30 or 40 years has been the institutes of education, from Letterkenny to Sligo to Athlone to Carlow. There are outreaches going from Galway to Castlebar and they have all been a shining example of how the middle and lower income earner's son or daughter could have a chance for third level education. That has given us a significant advantage worldwide, and we have never had a better generation of educated people than we do currently.

Where will all these young students find jobs for the future? As we all know, jobs in the future will be in technology and we must encourage our students and future graduates in this regard. I strongly suggest to the Minister of State that the majority of our students must go for a higher level of mathematics and science. I propose in this debate in Seanad Éireann on Ash Wednesday 2009 that the Government consider increasing by 50% the points value in the leaving certificate for mathematics and science to encourage our young students to take up these subjects. As we have been told by Science Foundation Ireland and the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, our student levels in this regard will not be of the required numbers for the jobs that will be available when the students leave school in two or three years.

With the success of the third level institutes, we can open every IDA Ireland site throughout Ireland to facilitate research and development. Those students who take science as a subject in university must sign away their intellectual property rights in the event that they are fortunate enough to be a creator and innovator in that field. We should follow the role model of Waterloo university, located 25 miles from the city of Toronto, in what we do here. The three young men who devised the BlackBerry technology were the students who started the Waterloo Campus outside Toronto. At that time there was nothing there only marshy land and the local authority gave those three young men an option to build an incubator unit there. Many incubator units are there today, operated by world-class multinational companies. However, the difference between that site in Toronto and any other site I visited throughout the world is that the intellectual property can become the ownership of the creator and innovator. That means in the majority of cases the brains who are creators and innovators throughout America and Canada now go to Waterloo university to develop their new technologies That results in that university campus having a higher percentage of success than any other such place I have visited on my travels.

Our institutes should work with IDA Ireland, which has 82 sites throughout the country. There is a 68-acre state-of-the-art IDA Ireland site in Mullingar. All the services, including broadband and gas, are connected and there are two bus stops near the site, but there is not 1 sq. ft. of building because no project is being set up on the site. The third level institute in Athlone is a state-of-the-art complex with 6,500 students. It is a fabulous campus. In Tullamore, like Mullingar, there are IDA Ireland sites, but there is no third level institute. An outreach arm, so to speak, has been extended to what is known as a gateway destination, that of Athlone, Tullamore and Mullingar, the ATM, as it is known in the midlands.

IDA Ireland has 82 sites throughout Ireland but no one is interested in investing in them. They could all operate as outreach sites and work hand in hand with the institutes of technology. Ireland could be the innovation centre of Europe if we introduced a regulation to provide that intellectual property will be the owner of the creator and innovator. By doing that we would ensure that Ireland would be the magnet to attract young creators and innovators throughout Europe to work here. It could employ hundreds of thousands of young people who would be the creators and innovators in the future. This is one idea I have observed on my travels during the past four and a half years that Ireland could put to good use. Perhaps the Minister of State and his staff will research the opportunity that exists for this to take place.

I stress the importance of giving 50% more points immediately for mathematics and science in the leaving certificate. That would send a message to our students that if they take up those two subjects they could play a pivotal role and be centre stage in Ireland's success into the future.

The IDA Ireland sites are available and could be taken over with the stroke of a pen and it would be wonderful if they were used in the way I outlined. I understand from the Waterloo Campus that a by-law is in place stipulating that the campus success is dependent on the creator or innovator giving a licence to the campus for ten years, 15 years or 20 years, for a 15%, 20% or 30% share of the royalty for the facilities. In that way the campus can grow and develop further activities and progress and retain the concept of the genius of the creator and innovator which is central to the future of job creation. We need only reflect on the success of the BlackBerry technology, which has transformed the working lives of every person who has been fortunate enough to purchase one. Governments throughout the western world use this technology as the centre stage of their art of communication.

This is one idea I want to bring to the Minister of State's attention. It is something I feel strongly about and not enough is being done about it. Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and former Ministers for Enterprise, Trade and Employment know exactly what is the successful format in this regard. This idea would complement the huge success of the institutes of technology throughout the country. We owe a vote of thanks to the teaching staff, the boards of management and all those administrators who have handled our institutes since they were first set up. The institutes have transformed rural Ireland. They have transformed the lives of the sons and daughters of middle income to lower income earners, who previously would not have had a chance to go to university. I say that as one who has hard experience in this area. Poor men's daughters and sons born in Ireland are the brainiest people anywhere in the world and they did not get a chance until now. I pay tribute to the vision of the Governments that put these institutes in place. They have served our country way beyond our wildest dreams.

Now we must move to the next step. We must put in place the necessary regulations and policies and provide the necessary tools to encourage young creators and innovators throughout Europe to work here. Ireland would be an attractive destination for such activity. Such an initiative, coupled with the 12.5% corporation tax rate, which is still in place and will be for the long term, would give us a huge advantage. The smaller the country, the easier it is to implement such an initiative. Conversely, the larger the country, the more difficult it is to do so because universities, in the main, will not want this departure. Such activity is the lifeblood of income for them also.

The IDA Ireland sites could be available with the stroke of a pen to facilitate such activity and it could happen quickly. It could be responsible for a great number of young people getting employment into the future. We are advised that research and development is important for the future. It is the driving force that is needed to gel the pieces together. We can do that, North and South. This could be a Thirty-two County initiative. It would be wonderful for our friends in the Six Counties and the other part of Ulster to be involved in it. My parish in Castlepollard bounds the Ulster border. Would it not be wonderful and uplifting to have this as a Thirty-two County initiative? What a wonderful opportunity it would be to demonstrate our friendship and for the North-South bodies, one of which I am privileged to be a member, as well as being a member of the Good Friday Agreement committee. If we were to introduce this initiative, the island of Ireland, with Thirty-two Counties, would be the innovation island of Europe.

I give the Minister of State that idea today and I hope that in the very near future we can revisit the subject of intellectual property rights, ascertain what progress is being made on it and see how we can assist the Minister of State and his officials on this country's future, which depends to such a large extent on the Minister of State's portfolio.