Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)
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Question 411: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment his plans for business and industry. [19286/05]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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As Minister for enterprise, my objective is to ensure that our economy remains a globally competitive, profitable and secure location for business. I believe we can best help enterprise by putting in place the framework conditions which promote entrepreneurship, encourage innovation and which enable business to be competitive in a global market. When provided with the best supporting environment business and industry will develop their own plans to capitalise on investment and growth opportunities.

My strategy to drive economic development is well established. My Department and its enterprise development agencies have a firm mandate to encourage a more dynamic, enterprising and innovation based economy, which can sustain higher living standards for all. While we cannot ignore the importance of maintaining an attractive taxation regime as one of the primary supports for business, our focus is now on prioritising policies that promote research and innovation, entrepreneurship and helping companies extend their reach into global markets.

Policy development will be significantly influenced by the policy prescriptions set out in the enterprise strategy group's report and I have already announced an action plan to drive the implementation process. This will include the formation of an enterprise expert group to advise me on the pace of implementing the group's recommendations. I also intend to make regular reports to Cabinet on enterprise policy issues together with the wider competitiveness agenda in the context of reports from the National Competitiveness Council.

In tandem with ESG related policy changes I am placing science, technology and innovation at the centre of other hugely important policy objectives. These will help transform our economy into an acknowledged European centre for knowledge enterprises and high technology products and services. To accelerate this process I published the national research and development action plan last year. This sets out the policy architecture to grow research and development expenditure to 2.5% of GNP by 2010, expand businesses spending on research and development to €2.5 billion in the same period and to expand the number of researchers from 5.1 per thousand in 2001 to 9.3 per thousand by 2010. The blueprint for turning these goals into action is being developed in my Department and I will publish a more detailed step by step implementation agenda by the autumn. All these arrangements are closely associated with meeting the goals of the Lisbon Agenda, which aims to radically change the competitiveness of the EU by making it easier for small companies to thrive and become a more important catalyst for employment growth and innovation.

In this regard, I expect Enterprise Ireland's strategic plan for Irish industry to direct a substantial change in how the agency designs programmes to help indigenous firms and delivers these supports to companies. I believe it clearly represents a major change in approach to help firms compete through better innovation and higher productivity, all driven by a deeper understanding of market demand. Mindful of the competitive pressures facing Irish companies, I recently sanctioned Enterprise Ireland's productivity improvement fund with a total budget of €20 million until the end of 2006. This will assist Irish firms in their drive for higher efficiency and international competitiveness.

Ireland must remain an attractive location for high technology and sophisticated service companies. IDA Ireland's continued success in winning world class investments from global leaders in biopharmaceutical, communications and medical device markets convinces me that our approach to this aspect of investment for jobs, is robust and successful.