Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, to the House. I attended a conference this morning in the Rotunda Hospital at which he delivered a very good and detailed contribution. The area of medical research is very relevant to our discussion today. This country can have an important part to play in progressing developments in this area and devising new solutions to medical problems.

Senator Clune referred to funding for people involved in research. There was discussion at the conference this morning about the lack of a career path for researchers and the pay scales involved. Perhaps it is time to consider offering tax reliefs, comparable with the reliefs offered to artists, to people who are directly involved in and whose only source of income comes from research and development, particularly medical research. There might be an upper income limit below which people would be exempt from paying tax. The same type of scheme has worked very well in the case of artists, particularly people involved in the music industry. The advantage of such reliefs is that as well as offering a benefit to the recipient, there is a benefit for society at large whether in terms of artistic output or medical breakthroughs. The introduction of a tax relief scheme in the area of research and development also offers the potential to generate a large number of jobs.

I do not want to take from the importance and benefits of Science Week, but it is important to highlight another issue that was raised at the conference this morning, namely, that funding for research and development is provided by different organisations without any overall strategic co-ordination. It is an issue we must address. People and organisations, including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and universities, should be working together to achieve the maximum impact in this area and an overall benefit for the country.

Another issue raised at the conference related to the Health Research Board, the shift away from biomedical research and the fact that Science Foundation Ireland is not picking up all the slack. In other words, research is falling between two stools. The question was raised this morning as to whether we have the necessary infrastructure in place in certain areas to ensure we get the maximum benefit out of Horizon 2020. The target is to get in more than €1 billion over a period of time and it is important that we prioritise that. I take the opportunity to thank the Minister of State for the work he has done to date in this area. He has been very proactive in putting the co-ordination process in place, but a great deal of work remains to be done. We are very fortunate in Cork to have nine of the ten top pharmaceutical companies based within a 50 mile radius of the city. We need to start taking better advantage of that by enhancing co-ordination between, for example, universities and hospitals.

The lack of co-ordination of clinical research was also raised. We must do more in that area. I was at the conference because of an interest in rare diseases. Science has moved on and medical research has moved on and we are now identifying rare conditions. The country is so small that the number of directly people affected is quite small, with only four or six families being affected by a given disease. In United States, a rare condition might affect 200 or 300 people. It is not possible for us to provide the backup support to a person with the condition. We need to co-ordinate between member states in the European Union to share information. That also ties into the directive with regard to cross-border health care and the sharing of information between member states and medical organisations across the 28 member states. The directive was passed in February 2011 but the target is now to have it in place by February or March 2014. This will be welcome in terms of co-ordinating the health services to provide solutions to particular problems. We need to do more work on getting assistance from the UK, where the population is 55 million or 60 million and where more people are affected by rare conditions than the number affected here. There is much to be learned with regard to research and development and we need to do it in a far more co-ordinated way than was the case in the past. The Minister of State has done much work in the area and hopefully he can get the necessary support to continue to develop and grow the area. I thank him for his contribution to date.