Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The claim about shifting from one company to another has been thoroughly addressed by Senator Donohoe. One of the problems that arises in assigning innovation to a Department is that people will think the matter can be addressed in one place. A Department with responsibility for innovation should simply be an additional extra to innovation taking place everywhere else. There is a Commissioner in Europe whose main focus is innovation. To be fair to the Minister of State, he referred to what the Government has put in place to encourage research and development by tax and other means and the Government can take credit for that, which I have acknowledged many times. This Government and previous Governments have bent over backwards to make a variety of supports available for innovation. I do not support this recommendation with any sense of criticism towards the Government, which has done very well in this regard. It is simply that there has not been a pick-up in the area. This is an extra measure, something new which has not been done before. It is innovative in dealing with innovation and in this regard it has a certain attractiveness. The situation saddens me and were it up to me I would push the recommendation to a vote because we must keep making the point to each other about the importance of these issues. I understand the remarks of the Minster of State and I welcome the generosity of his response in that sense but I regret these issues take too long to come through from start to finish.