Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Question 70: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment her views on the establishment of a centre at which persons with innovative ideas could have them researched and tested for possible feasibility; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46451/09]

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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The Government's approach in this regard is to attempt to utilize the entire higher education research sector as such a test bed for innovative ideas. The Government has invested heavily in recent years through Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and PRTLI to develop facilities and supports within the third-level sector to encourage scientists and engineers to develop business ideas.

A network of Incubation Centres are currently provided in Institutes of Technology and Universities, funded through Enterprise Ireland, which proved a network of facilities designed to help emerging entrepreneurs in the effort to develop new businesses. The Incubation Centres include 'hot desks' where an individual can work on an idea at very modest cost. Also, the Enterprise Platform Programme is operated by the Institutes of Technology and is designed to provide support through a structured programme of lectures and mentoring to allow entrepreneurs with potential to develop business plans and grow their companies quickly.

Enterprise Ireland operates a range of supports to help entrepreneurs and companies engage with third level researchers to undertake collaborative research for the benefit of the company. Companies can be supported to undertake individual research projects via the Innovation Partnerships programme. On a smaller scale, firms can be supported by means of €5000 Innovation Voucher, whereby companies can identify a specific idea or business problem and seek solutions from a relevant research group in a third level institution. Larger collaborative research projects involving groups of companies are also supported. Industry Led Research programmes and the new EI/IDA Competence Centre initiative allow industry groups to set a commercially valuable research agenda which academics in the higher education sector deliver on.

Where companies may have the necessary in-company capabilities to explore new ideas but may require additional support in order to undertake the research, feasibility support is provided under Enterprise Ireland's R&D Fund.

The establishment of another centre with the necessary resources and in-house cross sectoral competencies to research and investigate feasibilities across a potentially vast breath of ideas would be prohibitively costly to implement, especially in the current budgetary situation.