Ned O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 57: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the importance he attaches to continued investment in research and innovation in the Irish agriculture food sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40780/10]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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My Department remains committed to investing in research and innovation in the Irish Agri-Food sector. I believe that both public and private investment in research and innovation is critical to ensuring that the Agri-Food industry becomes part of the smart economy thereby enabling it to play a key role in leading our country to better economic times.

The Food Harvest 2020 Report, recently published by my Department following detailed consideration of the appropriate future strategic direction of the sector by a Group comprising all the major stakeholders, highlights research and innovation as a prerequisite to achieving the growth targets set out in the report. In response to key recommendations in this report, I recently announced a €10m research Call comprising a number of industry relevant novel initiatives across my Department's three Competitive Research Funding Programmes, namely the Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM), the Research Stimulus Fund (RSF) and the Programme of Competitive Forest Research for Development (COFORD).

My Department invests heavily in agri-food research and innovation both directly through these three competitive, public good, funding programmes as well as indirectly via grant-in-aid funding to Teagasc and the Marine Institute. This funding has built significant human and physical research capacity, capability and critical mass that serves to underpin the sector for the benefit of producers, processors, the wider rural community, and the consumer. The recently announced Call will add further this. Of course, as acknowledged in Food Harvest 2020, the industry itself must play its part too by increasing the level of its own investment in research and innovation both at producer and processor level.