Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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49. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the degree to which innovation remains an integral part of this country’s campaign to maximise its industrial impact in terms of effective trading, efficiency and modernisation with particular reference to competing on EU and world markets; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49778/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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A key objective for Ireland is to deliver growth that is sustainable, led by strong export performance and underpinned by innovation, productivity and competitiveness.  As the Government continues to place innovation at the heart of enterprise and jobs policies, my Department has developed Innovation 2020, Ireland’s strategy for research and development, science and technology, and Enterprise 2025, Ireland’s enterprise policy, side by side.  As set out in Innovation 2020, Ireland’s ambition is to become Global Innovation Leader, driving a strong sustainable economy, underpinned by a strong innovative and internationally competitive enterprise base, growing employment, sales and exports.  Recognising that innovation must be at the core of stimulating growth, sustainability and company resilience, the strategy sets out actions to increase enterprise engagement in innovation to assist companies in developing new, higher value-added products and services, and more efficient processes.  

Enterprise 2025 sets a roadmap for long-term enterprise development and resilience, with the ambition to achieve a step-change in the performance of our enterprises, to build a real and distinctive competitive edge sector-by-sector and to excel in creating a jobs-fit environment with top-three competitiveness ranking.  Enterprise 2025 is currently being reviewed to ensure that our policy framework and priorities are robust and remain current.  This review is being undertaken in the context of global changes that are likely to have an immediate impact on Ireland's enterprise development, and specifically Brexit and potential policy changes under the new US administration.

In March of this year, the Government published a new Trade Strategy, Ireland Connected: Trading and Investing in a Dynamic World, a whole of government commitment to our openness to trade, to strengthening our international relationships and to deepening our enterprise resilience. The strategy sets out a suite of actions that will enable us to respond to structural change and to realise growth that is sustainable over the longer term. The strategy recognises that our strategic investment in innovation contributes to an environment that allows the benefits of open trade to materialise in Ireland.

Supporting innovation in companies to diversify their exports while also growing exports in existing markets has been a central pillar of Enterprise Ireland strategy for over a decade.  Enterprise Ireland’s 2017-2020 ‘Build Scale and Expand Reach’ Strategy and its new Eurozone Strategy to assist Irish exporters increase exports in Eurozone countries by 50% by 2020 is a medium-term strategy particularly aimed at strengthening clients export offer and finding new export opportunities.