Catherine Noone (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, who is my constituency colleague. We all agree she has an in-depth knowledge of her brief and is ideally suited to the portfolio.

The EU has been a great friend to Ireland over the past two decades. Ireland and the EU face challenging times and this should be acknowledged when speaking about the EU's role in enterprise, innovation and job creation. To date the EU has contributed greatly to allow us create employment and its investment in our infrastructure, education and employment has contributed to the direct creation of more than 50,000 jobs in the past decade. The EU gives all its member states great resources to create jobs and at present Ireland is working to use these opportunities and resources to the greatest effect possible given our challenges.

It should be noted that Ireland is the second fastest spender of the European social fund and is on target to draw down €375 million for measures supporting labour activation and getting people into the labour market. Meanwhile, in the past two years Ireland has submitted six applications for the European globalisation adjustment fund for more than €60 million for training and job search assistance. That has assisted nearly 10,000 workers in training and retraining for a challenging economy. The European Union has been of great assistance in job creation.

To help member states reform their labour markets, improve education systems and support social inclusion the EU has a financial mechanism, the European social fund. In Ireland, over €900 million is being invested through the human capital investment programme to which the European social fund contributes €375 million. That money has gone towards a great many training and education programmes. It is clear the EU continues to help us create jobs in a challenging environment and, moreover, help us prepare for future changes in the labour market and further challenges ahead through its extensive funding for retraining programmes and education.

With regard to innovation, in the past decade through the European social fund, Europe has helped Ireland by creating specific goals and targets, goals which Ireland has responded to admirably and worked hard to reach. For instance, an EU wide goal which has been mentioned often is the target of having 3% of GDP of each EU member state spent on research and development by 2020. When that goal was set in 2000, Ireland's spend on research and development was 1.12% of GDP and by 2009 that had increased to 1.7%. That may appear to be a small percentage but we should consider that in that period Ireland outperformed EU and United States growth in research and development. Moreover, that increase directly created 22,000 highly skilled jobs. The figure is expected to exceed 2% by 2013, which puts us on target to achieve that ambitious goal. I would agree with the Minister's comments with regard to enforcing those targets, which is very important.

Furthermore, the EU's focus on innovation and the supporting mechanism of the European social fund have encouraged us to invest in education and helped foster innovation from a young age. Last week I met with the head of a $500 million Silicon Valley company at the launch of its Dublin office and he stated that he saw Ireland as the capital of innovation in Europe, which is a wonderful accolade and something we must continue to actively cultivate in spite of the challenges we face.

The EU has helped us innovate and by innovating we can begin to work our way out of the problems in which we find ourselves. If we always do what we have always done we will always get what we have always got. What worked previously may not work again. Using the resources that the EU give us to create a flexible, innovative, creative workforce is now one of the biggest challenges facing us.

In addition to all of that, the EU anticipates that 85% of jobs will be medium or high skilled by 2020 and, as such, the European social fund has allowed us to actively train and retrain our citizens. We currently have the highest percentage of third level graduates in the EU between 30 and 34 years of age - my own generation - and while we face many challenges we must continue to pursue these goals and take advantage of the resources at our disposal. The €370 million in the European social fund is precious. Moreover, we have also secured €213 million in funding for research and education from the seventh EU framework programme.

While we have been working our way through a terrible period, with the help of the EU and a continued focus on educating and training our citizens more will be prepared to take advantage of jobs in our digital, knowledge driven economy. Even now, without the continued assistance of the EU, our jobs position would be a degree worse than it is, something which is difficult to imagine and yet is rarely acknowledged. As we continue to invest and focus on rebuilding our economy it is important that we recognise the contribution the EU has made to innovation and job creation and actively work to make the most of the opportunities and funds available to us.

I thank the Minister for coming into the House. I welcome her comments and wish her the best of luck in her very important job.