Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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68. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which he expects industry here to avail of technology and innovation as a means of enhancing productivity in the manufacturing and services sectors in the future based on the trend over the past four years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48692/14]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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My Department, and the relevant State Agencies under its remit, have a clear focus on the role of innovation as a key driver of business success and growth. Enterprise Ireland, IDA and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), provide a range of innovation and technology development programmes that deliver financial, technical and experiential support. These programmes help companies become more innovative and encourage and support competitiveness. They help grow sales and exports which in turn will lead to sustainable employment. Innovation is a key characteristic of growing companies in both the Manufacturing and Services sectors. By way of illustration, in 2013 SFI had links to 65 per cent of the jobs announced by IDA in fields covered by SFI’s legal remit. The importance of innovation and technology to Ireland’s on-going and future economic recovery is well recognised by the Government as being crucial to growth in both our indigenous and FDI sectors. Evidence, from both the EU and internationally, shows that the Government’s strategy of accelerating the economic and societal return on our Science Technology and Innovation investment is paying off. While is it not possible to fully disaggregate the contribution of Innovation and Technology to job creation, all the evidence is that it is very significant, as Ireland moves up the value chain and exploits our competitive position in knowledge based activity. We have actively pursued the availability of EU funding for Research and Innovation and, in particular, we will ensure that we will access significant funding from both the new EU Horizon 2020 and the new EU INTERREG V Programmes, to further enhance Irish business capability.

Measures designed to support industrial growth were pursued in the Action Plan for Jobs 2013 and2014and included encouraging entrepreneurship and supporting start‐up activity, further improving our skills base, assisting our businesses to grow, improved access to finance by SMEs and developing and deepening opportunities from global investment. Work is currently underway to draft our 2015 Action Plan for Jobs, which will continue to drive this agenda.