Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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285. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the amount spent supporting research and development expenditure in the private sector and the proportion of that expenditure made up by direct expenditure as against tax expenditure in each of the years 2012 to 2015, inclusive. [46789/15]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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286. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the proportion of the amount of expenditure supporting research and development in the private sector which accrued to non-indigenous businesses in each of the years 2012 to 2015, inclusive. [46790/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 285 and 286 together.

Details of direct expenditure provided by agencies of my Department to the private sector to support R&D from 2012-2014 (latest available data) are detailed in the attached Table 1. Supports to foreign-owned companies are provided by IDA Ireland and supports to indigenous companies are provided by Enterprise Ireland (EI), although EI also have a small number of foreign owned companies in their client base.

Other Departments also provide direct support for R&D to the private sector either directly or through agencies under their remit.

The GBARD metric, (Government Budget Appropriations for Research and Development) captures total public sector expenditure on R&D. GBARD figures for 2012 – 2014 are detailed in table 2 below. GBARD includes a mix of support to companies but also support to Higher Education Institutes and academic researchers, much of which research is undertaken in collaboration with industry.

The Research and Development (R&D) tax credit is available to all companies that are undertaking qualifying research and development activities in Ireland or within the European Economic Area. The Department of Finance Review of the R&D Tax Credit 2013 found that the tax credit supports some 70% of business expenditure on R&D. Table 2 outlines the cost to the exchequer of the R&D tax credit for 2012-2013, the latest years for which data is available.

Table 1: Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland support for R&D in the private sector 2012-2014

Table 2: GBARD and Cost to Exchequer of R&D Tax Credit 2012-2013