Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to address Seanad Éireann on Innovation 2020, Ireland's new strategy for research and development, science and technology. Innovation 2020 is based on a shared vision of Ireland becoming a global innovation leader, driving a strong sustainable economy and a better society. Its launch was the culmination of a year-long process of collaboration and consultation on how Ireland should aim to achieve this vision. We have discussed this issue in debates here in the past year or two which contributed to it. I also acknowledge the significant contribution made to the development of Innovation 2020 by Ireland's research and scientific community and enterprise, as well as by many Departments and Government agencies. We conducted an extensive consultation process with stakeholders from industry, academia, the public sector and civil society and I had the pleasure of hosting a consultative forum in Farmleigh in July last year. Many of the issues raised and discussed are reflected in the final strategy. I have met many of the people who contributed to the process and was struck by the shared sense of drive and ambition for Ireland's future.

We have made significant progress in our national innovation system, which started from a very low base by international comparisons, over the past ten or 15 years.Ireland has today become home to nine of the top ten global ICT companies, nine of the top ten global pharmaceutical companies, 17 of the top 25 global medical devices companies, and more than half of the world's leading financial services institutions. Ireland is now in the global top 20 for the quality of our scientific research.

Our investment in research and innovation has been instrumental in strengthening indigenous enterprise, securing, diversifying and growing foreign direct investment, licensing new technologies, establishing new companies, and providing the highly educated workforce needed to grow the economy and contribute to society. In Innovation 2020, we commit to building on this significant progress. Key to delivering our vision is a commitment to increasing public and private investment in research. During the period 2008 to 2013, public funding was redesigned to improve its impact and incremental improvements to the research and development tax credit were introduced to support growth in business expenditure on research and development such that more than two thirds of expenditure on research and development occurred in the business sector, with just under one third of expenditure coming from the public sector. To ensure that we are best placed to build on what we have already achieved, we present a path to obtaining an increase in public research investment and to thereby leverage greater private investment in order to bring Ireland's public and private research and development expenditure to 2.5% of GNP by 2020.

Increased investment will be targeted at increasing the number of research personnel in enterprise to 40,000; increasing annual research masters and PhD enrolments by 500 to 2,250; doubling private investment in research and development within the public research system; further developing the network of centres, building critical mass and addressing enterprise needs. They are our research centres, and today we launched ADAPT in Trinity, introducing a successor to the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions to provide investment in new research facilities and equipment, and the maintenance and upgrading of existing ones. A key part of the message coming out of our universities and institutes of technology is that we must invest in new infrastructure but also make sure we preserve the equipment and infrastructure we built over the past ten or 15 years and keep it running to the highest level, which involves allocating money to maintenance also. Expanding Ireland's participation in international research organisations, including CERN, is also part of the actions.

Our enterprise base must be resilient and internationally competitive, and innovation is central to ensuring that these aims are achieved. We are putting in place supports to encourage greater engagement in research and development in both indigenous and foreign owned enterprises and in both small and medium enterprises, SMEs, and large-scale enterprises. Enterprises will be supported through direct supports, research and development tax credits, and the new knowledge development box.

We will also simplify and streamline supports for enterprise and make them more easily accessible. A key part of the strategy was to make that road map clear so that people could see where they could plug into the system. We also had our second innovation showcase in December, which was about displaying what we have on offer to the public research system, encouraging more companies to get involved, and seeing where they fit into the system. The aim of this is to get more companies involved in the public research system in collaboration with our education institutes where we will achieve our best results. We will achieve innovation leadership in key sectors where we can sustain a competitive edge and will continue to target investment at strategically important areas of commercial opportunity.

We are fully aware that our indigenous companies need to perform research and continually innovate to remain competitive in a global marketplace. The fact that we have established a strong research system is one of the main reasons we continue to be able to attract important foreign direct investment to Ireland and encourage many companies, both from Ireland and abroad, to set up here. Last year we had the highest number, with over 19,000 companies starting up here.

To achieve our vision of becoming a global innovation leader, there are a number of areas on which we plan to focus. We want to see greater numbers of enterprises engaging in research and development, and more enterprises progressing to a point where innovation is embedded as a key part of their business model. We intend to continue to concentrate the majority of our competitive public research funding on the sectors where we believe Ireland can achieve the greatest return on our investment. The world is constantly changing, and we must continually re-evaluate our priorities to ensure that our investment in research and innovation is optimal. In implementing this strategy we will seek to identify areas of strategic commercial opportunity to ensure that Ireland can respond to and gain competitive advantage in new areas.

Innovation is completely dependent on knowledgeable and skilled people, and we have significant competitive advantage in our people. With one of the youngest populations in Europe and one of the most highly educated in the world, Ireland has a resource that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. We will continue to develop our talent base with exceptional educational programmes and facilities, complemented by and integrated with world-class research programmes. As Minister with responsibility for skills, developing the talent of our population is of particular interest to me, and is an underlying aim of Innovation 2020. When we talk to people in companies who choose to grow or locate here from another country they tell us it is about talent, and there is a talent war taking place. They are coming to Ireland because they know we have the skills they need, but we cannot take that for granted. We have to build on it and make sure we have the talent for the future to ensure those companies will be able to grow and expand. Talent is critical to the successful realisation of our national vision and giving Ireland the capacity to exploit opportunities, both established and emerging. Our success in delivering on our vision will depend on our people undertaking the research, working in and creating successful enterprises, and contributing to the society in which we live. Ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of trained people to deliver our strategy will be key. We plan, therefore, to increase the number of research personnel in enterprise to over 40,000 and to increase the number of research masters and PhD enrolments to 2,250 by 2020.

We will support the full continuum of talent development from primary level through to postdoctoral research. We are also committed in this strategy to supporting the full continuum of research from basic to applied, including frontier research as well as research aligned to current priorities. Frontier research ensures diversity and provides resilience and responsiveness so that as new challenges and opportunities emerge, we will be positioned to respond quickly to the changed circumstances. We will support qualified researchers to undertake project-based frontier research across all disciplines on the basis of excellence and the Irish Research Council will have a key role in supporting that. It is also a major factor in making sure we have the talent we need. We have to fund across disciplines to make sure we get the talent that both industry and our public research system need to be able to grow and expand.

Continued support for a well-equipped research environment is an investment in the tools that will keep us at the cutting edge of research and innovation. We will further develop our research infrastructure to ensure that we are providing the platform for excellent research activity. Yesterday, we made another announcement of €28 million to over 21 different projects through Science Foundation Ireland. That is investing in the infrastructure that is needed if we are to continue with the excellence of our research.

The full range of research activity includes research for both economic and societal benefit, and research in either of these often benefits both. Research in the public sector is crucial for underpinning a strong, developed economy and developing a progressive, sustainable society delivering modern public services efficiently to meet growing needs and expectations. We will adopt a challenge-centric approach by bringing partners across academia, business, public service and civil society together to collaborate and focus on research that has the potential to address national and global challenges. It also gives us the opportunity to engage the wider public in setting those challenges by asking them what they believe are those challenges. Much of our work in terms of this agenda is advocacy and encouraging people of all ages to get involved in the science agenda and take up the STEM subjects. Asking them to identify the challenges for society is a way of engaging them in the process.

The importance of collaboration in research cannot be underestimated, and a key part of this strategy is collaboration, both nationally and internationally. Collaboration across disciplines can provide new insights and lead to the development of novel products and services with commercial potential. Ireland has an advantage in pursuing this type of interdisciplinary research. The relatively small size and highly interconnected nature of the Irish public research system greatly facilitates collaboration and co-operation. Over the course of implementing the strategy, we will further promote interdisciplinary research.

We will also further incentivise collaboration between institutions and centres to create the critical mass necessary for world-leading research and ensure optimum use of research facilities. At the launch of the ADAPT research centre in Trinity today, I complimented the educational institutions for working together through those research centres because as is the case with those of us in politics, we work together but we are also in competition. Our research institutions are also in competition but when it is important they also work together. Through our research centres the best brains in our universities and institutes of technology can work together, which is key, and unique to this country. It is not seen in many other countries. We are the envy of the world in the way our system encourages people to work together on projects. We want to encourage more of that.

Collaboration between the enterprise sector and the public research system is also essential if the full value of investment in the public research system is to be realised. Our enterprise development agencies and Knowledge Transfer Ireland will focus on increasing the breadth and depth of collaboration between industry and academia for mutual benefit. A key part of our work in recent years was to make it possible for companies to get involved, and we are trying to maximise the resources. Already, taxpayers are funding over €700 million in terms of the research agenda, and we are looking to increase that greatly in the years ahead but to get the best value for our money it must be matched with money from the private sector. We are achieving results because of that combination of both private and public money, and taxpayers deserve no less.They deserve to see their money being used to its maximum potential.

As well as encouraging research at a national level, both in the public and private sectors, it is crucial for Ireland to participate in international collaborative research. The benefits of international and EU collaboration in research and innovation accrue not only to our researchers but also to our enterprise base and public policymakers. These include access to shared infrastructure and facilities and collaboration in addressing global societal challenges. By collaborating with international partners, we aim to secure €1.25 billion from the current framework programme for research and innovation - Horizon 2020. We had the opportunity to debate that here a number of months ago. There is a good deal of interest in Horizon 2020 and Ireland's success in that respect. We are ahead of our targets for the past two years, which is good. If we are to reach the high target of securing of €1.25 billion, we need more companies, including in small and medium enterprises and multinationals, to get involved in making applications for, and bidding to win, funding from Horizon 2020. We have exceeded our first year target and up to May last year we had secured almost €180 million in funding from Horizon 2020. We are committed to leveraging international and EU engagement to Ireland's advantage, including through our membership of international research organisations and boosting our returns from EU programmes. We will continue our membership of existing international research organisations and build on that by opening negotiations on membership of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, and the European Southern Observatory in order to obtain the best deal for Ireland.

Key to supporting an innovative enterprise sector is an effective regulatory framework for protecting intellectual property. We will encourage a competitive business environment, promote the commercialisation of products from publicly funded research and help ensure competitive advantage by assisting enterprises to use intellectual property to increase their levels of innovation. Considerable intellectual property has been built up in our educational institutes over the years and it is now time to put that to use for this country and turn it into products and services that will benefit society and also create jobs. We will try to do much more of that through this strategy over the next three or four years. We will seek to maximise the transfer of knowledge between research performing organisations and enterprise to promote greater application of research results. This will result in more licensing of technologies, the creation of more spin-out companies and, ultimately, jobs.

Research contributes to the success of the enterprise sector but it also adds to societal well-being in other areas such as education, health, housing, environment, mobility, connectivity, culture, and policy formulation. Innovations in these areas contribute greatly to improving the quality of life and they can, in turn, create opportunities for enterprise, as products and services developed to solve a problem in Ireland can be commercialised and implemented elsewhere. Many of our companies are building their success off the back of that. We want to encourage more of that, to make it easier for those companies and to facilitate that as best we can.

We will realise the full potential of public service innovation to provide better and more efficient public services. Innovation is key to driving continuous improvement in the way public services are delivered and is crucial in improving the efficiency and quality of service delivery, while reducing the costs involved in providing those services.

Science and innovation have the capacity to improve our quality of life and to deliver a better society for all but we can only deliver on the vision set out in this strategy if we work collectively and in concert with others. The strategy was put together by and will be implemented and driven through collaboration. It is of key importance that we get that message out. I thank Senators for affording me the opportunity to outline the strategy and to have a discussion with them on it. I am aware there is great interest among them in the research and science agenda.

The process of developing this strategy during the past year was a journey for many people involved in it who might not always have been familiar with what is involved in the research agenda by our top researchers in this country. Many Departments now realise the importance of funding for this area and also the importance of carrying out their own research to be able to deliver public services in a better and more efficient way, again making better use of taxpayers' money. I believe we have the commitment necessary from all the stakeholders across the system to do this and to achieve this. It is an ambitious strategy. Effectively, it will provide for doubling the spend, between taxpayers and private industry, in this sector over the next four or five years but we have to do that. The Taoiseach is very much behind this. He launched the strategy and he believes in it. He has met many of the Departments and stressed the importance of prioritising this sector when it comes to budget time. He understands the importance of this sector, as do many Ministers and Members across all parties. This is continuing the journey we started in the past ten to 15 years and we will continue to build on it. We need to be ambitious to aim high. If we are to compete with Denmark, Sweden and Finland, we have to spend this kind of money. We have to fund this kind of research and development to drive innovation. If we consider what is happening in Israel, we can see that this is the level we must target. We have a five-year plan and we will need further plans thereafter. I thank Members for their time.