Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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182. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to indicate the extent to which he expects industry here to avail of technology and innovation as a means of enhancing productivity in both 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. [30833/24]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Enterprise innovation is central to our national enterprise policy as set out in the White Paper on Enterprise, and is a pillar in the Government’s national innovation policy ‘Impact 2030’. It is a goal of my Department to encourage industry to invest in innovation so as to enhance productivity, business performance and competitiveness in international markets. This mission is mainly undertaken through our enterprise agencies.

Enterprises in Ireland have a strong track record of investing in research and innovation. Latest published CSO data shows that businesses in Ireland were estimated to have invested €3.89bn in research and development in 2021. Of this, Irish owned businesses spent €1.18bn on R&D. Furthermore, there has been an upward trend in R&D expenditure by the business sector since 2012. The services sector had the highest share of R&D expenditure, accounting for 61.3% of all expenditure, while manufacturing accounts for 38.7%.

Ireland is considered a strong innovator in Europe, and is ranked as the seventh most innovative country in the European Union according to the recently published European Innovation Scoreboard 2024. Ireland’s score has been improving over the last four years. Ireland does particularly well in the sales impact of our research, where we are the European leaders. This means that our enterprises across services and manufacturing are successfully commercialising research and bringing new innovations to market. This indicates that Irish firms across all sectors are creating and availing of new game-changing research and technology, improving their productivity, in addition to growing their export potential.

My Department, through Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, through a range of programmes, encourages enterprises, both indigenous and foreign owned, to become more innovative and productive.

In this regard, Enterprise Ireland continues to offer support to all enterprise types, from startups and SMEs, to researchers and large organisations through various funding initiatives. For example, the R&D grant, innovation partnerships and innovation vouchers, provide start-ups and SMEs advice and financial aid to assist them in developing their innovation capabilities or to develop new products, processes, or services.

EI also supports enterprises who work collaboratively with academics and other enterprises on research, development and innovation. The Technology Centres and Technology Gateways located around the country in higher education institutes are enabling important industry-academic research collaborations. In addition, collaborations in cutting edge research with high levels of commercial potential are boosted by programmes such as the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund, the more recent Innovators Initiative and EI's commercialisation funding.

Industry participation in research, development and innovation is also crucial in embedding foreign direct investment in Ireland, and foreign owned firms in Ireland continue to make investments in this regard. Significantly, IDA Ireland made 46 research, development and innovation investments in 2023, with those investments accounting for €1.4bn, compared with 37 and €1.3bn four years earlier in 2019.

My Department will continue to maintain a focus on enterprise innovation as a core part of our offerings to industry so as to ensure the competitiveness and productivity of our enterprise sector, and to underpin jobs across the country.