Mary Moran (Labour) | Oireachtas source

With a budget of just under €80 billion and covering the 2014-20 period, Horizon 2020 is the EU's largest ever research and innovation programme. Its objectives are to enable the creation of a world class research system for Europe, support European leadership in industrial development and address the grand challenges affecting society.

Under the 2007-13 seventh framework programme for research, technological development and innovation, Ireland secured almost €600 million in funding and managed to achieve the national target set for participation. The Government's aim for the next stage of the programme leading up to 2020 involved setting an ambitious target of €1.25 billion in funding, which was approved in December 2013.

The programme set out by the Government covers a wide range of strategies that aim to maximise our participation in Horizon 2020 and achieve the targets. Recently, the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs received submissions from various organisations and stakeholders on Horizon 2020's mid-term review. It must be recognised that the economic landscape in Europe bears little resemblance to that of the early years of the millennium and the economic context underpinning the framework has undergone complete transformation. On the positive side, good progress has been made in education, climate change and energy.

However, the issues of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, along with poverty and research and development have been much more challenging.

The Europe 2020 strategy sets a target employment for 20 to 64 year olds of 75% or 16 million additional people in employment. In Ireland's case the number in employment was up 31,600 or 1.7% to the end of the second quarter in 2014, which is one of the strongest growth rates in Europe.

One of the flagship initiatives under Horizon 2020 is the underpinning of a single digital market for Europe. However, the success of this initiative is under threat from the issues surrounding data protection. While it is vital that data continue to be allowed to flow across borders if businesses are to achieve their full potential, there has to be a balance between privacy and enterprise and the proposed legislation will need to take this into account. The target for research and development to reach 3% of GDP by 2020 will not be easy to achieve.

In the area of education, the Better Europe Alliance has put forward a good suggestion which would involve setting subtargets to highlight the different participation and outcome levels for specific groups of young people. In Ireland that could include Traveller children, children with disabilities or special learning needs and children living in disadvantaged areas. Setting subtargets for these groups could help to focus resources on the areas most in need.

Excellent science, competitive industry and better society are the three priorities of Horizon 2020. It is a very ambitious undertaking with the promise of huge rewards in many facets of life. Midway to 2020, it would certainly seem to be a case of refocusing and re-assessing in the context of the recent economic upheavals. Devising strategies to deal with the continuing problems of poverty and youth unemployment would seem to pose the most daunting challenges.

As I should have said at the start of my contribution, I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I wish to reiterate that he is doing a great job and I fully support Horizon 2020.