Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 331: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his views regarding Ireland's latest ranking on the European innovation table; the actions he is taking to ensure that innovation policy is being implemented; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9362/12]

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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The European Commission's Innovation Union Scoreboard, published earlier this month, shows Ireland retaining its position among those Member States with above average performance in their research and innovation systems. The scoreboard shows that Ireland has strengths in a number of areas including Human Resources, open, excellent and attractive research systems, and economic effects, which include employment in knowledge intensive activities and knowledge intensive service exports. It also identifies a number of areas where Ireland's performance is below the EU average, including R&D expenditure in the Government and Higher Education sector, venture capital investment, innovative SME collaborations and SMEs introducing product or process innovations. However, within some of the areas of relative weakness Ireland is performing above the EU average. For example, while we are below average in "innovative SMEs collaborating with others" and "public and private scientific co-publications" we are above average on "SMEs collaborating in-house".

Innovation is an integral part of overall economic policy and is central to the Government's reform agenda - this is best illustrated in the recently published Action Plan for Jobs which contains a myriad of initiatives to support broad based innovation.

The overall objective of the Action Plan for Jobs is to get the economy back on the right path to sustainable, exporting, innovative and enterprise led growth. It engages every Government Department and over 35 Agencies and Offices and will be monitored on a quarterly basis. A key objective of the Plan is to use research and innovation to build competitive advantage. A number of specific initiatives will deliver on this objective.

The majority of public research funding will be aligned with priority areas where we are most likely to get economic returns and monitoring systems will be put in place to measure the impact of funding. This initiative was approved by Cabinet last week and the Report of the Research Prioritisation Steering Group, which is informing this prioritisation process, will be published tomorrow. A key economic goal in this process will be a significantly enhanced focus on collaborative research with enterprise and on commercialisation by growing the number of researchers in enterprise and enhancing the flow of researchers between academia and enterprise.

Science Foundation Ireland operates a range of programmes designed to deliver world class research in third level institutions linked to Irish enterprises. Industry and academia collaborations have now reached 800 linkages across 500 companies. The remit of Science Foundation Ireland will be extended to include applied research, in addition to its existing remit covering oriented basic research, thereby enhancing the focus on commercialisation. SFI's funding will include support for Research Centres to enable them to build scale and world class in a sustainable way that fully underpins the development of industry in Ireland and the commercialisation of Irish research.

IDA will continue their strategy of attracting high quality FDI projects to Ireland and more firmly embed existing FDI companies with a strong emphasis on RDI – in 2011 IDA approvals for RDI stood at €700million representing an increase of 40% from 2010. The Department of Finance is also implementing, via the Finance Bill 2012, the R&D tax credit improvements announced in the budget which will help all companies and support research and innovation generally. This year, my Department will provide €140m to Enterprise Ireland (EI) to ensure the continued growth in the capacity in indigenous Irish companies to develop innovative and cutting-edge products, processes and services.

Enterprise Ireland will expand their in-company innovation capability and host a Big Ideas Showcase in 2012 to focus on securing investment and identifying business partners that will bring new technologies to the next stage of commercialisation. New Technology Centres in Cloud Computing, Learning Technologies and Financial Services will be established and preparatory work will begin on others relevant to the prioritisation exercise mentioned already. EI will also develop and pilot, in the South East, an innovation Graduates Programme managed in conjunction with the Institutes of Technology and open a call under the Innovation Voucher Scheme specifically focused on design and branding activities for SMEs, with Third Level Institutes as providers. A second call will be launched under Innovation Fund Ireland to attract significant venture capital players to Ireland.

In the area of Intellectual Property (IP) a new Protocol is being developed to manage IP arising from state funded research and a feasibility study is underway to examine what structures and policies could be developed to make Ireland a world centre for managing and trading in IP.

Public Procurement is also being used as a lever for innovation. My Department is working with Enterprise Ireland and others to develop a Procuring Innovation Initiative to increase purchasing of innovative solutions from SMEs by encouraging a more flexible approach to tendering that focuses on procuring solutions to needs rather than specific products or services.

My Department is working with the Department of Health and relevant State Agencies to develop a Health Innovation Hub to drive collaboration between the health system and enterprise leading to the development and commercialisation of new healthcare technologies. There are also a number of initiatives being taken to support innovation in sectors including the Green Economy, Agri-Food, ICT, Cloud Computing, Retail and Wholesale.

Innovation is cross-cutting and requires a broad based approach. The breadth of initiatives in the Action Plan for Jobs to support innovation is a testament to the Government's commitment to delivering innovation policy to support our economic recovery.