Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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128. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his views on the operation of the Enterprise Ireland innovation voucher initiative; his plans to expand the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44351/14]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher Initiative was established in 2007 in order to drive an on-going innovation cultural shift within small enterprise by promoting and encouraging a transfer of knowledge between Ireland’s public knowledge providers and the small business community and creating greater synergies between the two. This scheme provides small companies access to the sources of knowledge, expertise and innovation available in our Universities and Institutes of Technology and in so doing acts as an important driver of knowledge transfer from 3rd Level Institutes to industry. The Vouchers, worth €5,000, can be used by small Irish companies to explore a business opportunity or problem and purchase advice and knowledge that is new to the company.

The Innovation Voucher initiative has proven to be a very useful tool in encouraging companies to embark on initial innovation projects and to collaborate with higher education research groups. The scheme operates very efficiently while dealing with considerable numbers of projects on a yearly basis. To date, 5,847 Innovation Vouchers have been issued to Irish companies, increasing from 428 per annum in 2007 to over 1,000 per annum in 2013. These figures illustrate substantial growth in the scheme since its inception and the strong appetite/demand for these important Vouchers among small businesses.

A recent independent external evaluation of this programme indicated high levels of programme effectiveness and company satisfaction. The evaluation found that 24% of respondent companies had introduced new products to their companies and 23% had improved products within the company as a result of the Voucher project. Over the total portfolio of projects supported during the evaluation period €7.65 of company turnover was created for every euro Enterprise Ireland invested. There is frequently a lag effect between performing R&D and a company receiving the full impact from the activity. As such it is always useful to include projections of future value as well as counting impacts achieved to date. It was found that the Vouchers issued during this evaluation period are anticipated to achieve €27.76 in increased turnover for every €1 invested by EI by 2017. These figures represent a very impressive return predicted on state investment.

With regard to companies’ satisfaction with the operations of the scheme, as part of the evaluation 94% of companies said that they would be willing to participate in an Innovation Voucher project in the future and 93% would be willing to recommend the programme to other businesses. A further 82% stated that participation in the project has increased their desire to work with research partners in the future. One of the key objectives of this programme was to improve links between industry and 3rd level institutes – these findings suggest that the voucher programme has been successful in doing this.

Enterprise Ireland plans to pilot a limited expansion of the Innovation Voucher Scheme to larger SMEs and it is expected that this pilot will be launched in 2015.