Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Question 24: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the amounts allocated to Science Foundation Ireland's centres for science and engineering, technology in 2008 and 2009; the amount allocated to academic industrial partnerships; the amount allocated to specific projects and the projects in relation to same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14613/09]

Jimmy Devins (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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As outlined in the Government's "Building Ireland's Smart Economy – A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal" Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is playing a central role in Ireland's sustainable economic renewal. SFI has a number of programmes, which are specifically designed to promote strong industry/academic collaborations. The awards and 2008 funding provision for the most significant of these programmes, SFI Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSETs) and the Strategic Research Clusters (SRCs) are set out in Tables 1 and 2.

The financial allocation to SFI for the full range of programmes for 2009 will be set out in the Revised Book of Estimates following the Budget announcement on 7th April.

To date, SFI has made awards to 9 CSETs and 17 SRCs in total. These industry-embedded research groups are formally linked to over 150 multinational and small to medium high-tech enterprises that employ over 60,000 people in high value jobs in Ireland. These groups have been integral to IDA Ireland's strategy of attracting more R&D-based foreign direct investment to Ireland. In recent years SFI has gradually shifted the focus of investments from individually-led investigator groups to groups within enterprise clusters with over double the number of SFI funded world-class Principal Investigators now being located within the CSETs and SRCs when compared to the 2004 position.

These SFI funded activities are consistent with promoting research and development as a key part of the enterprise agenda, assisting as they do the retention and attraction of quality employment in Ireland, and thereby increasing the value of Irish industry.

In addition, SFI also operates an industry supplement to SFI funded researchers and the 2008 expenditure associated with this programme amounted to €701,864. Therefore total payments made by SFI in 2008 for all the industry / academic collaborative programmes it supports (CSETs, SRCs and Industrial Supplements) amounted to €39.19m. Table 1 – SFI Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSETs)

Table 2 – SFI funding of Strategic Research Clusters