Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 June 2023
803. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science his views on Ireland’s position with regard to scientific concentration in the recent IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook; and his plans to improve on the ranking of No. 35 in total expenditure on R&D and scientific infrastructure (details supplied). [31116/23]
View answerI was pleased to see that Ireland’s strong economic performance has been recognised in the latest IMD World Competitiveness Rankings, coming second out of the sixty-four countries analysed.
Ireland’s policy of investing in our research and innovation (R&I) capability over the past twenty years has had a significant impact on our industrial development, contributing to job creation and our current levels of economic prosperity. As a result of a sustained commitment to research, development and innovation, Ireland has successfully built-up research capacity and an international reputation for research excellence.
In recent years Ireland has significantly increased our total public and private expenditure on R&I (i.e., Gross Expenditure on R&D or GERD), from €2.6 billion in 2011 to an estimated €4.7 billion in 2021, an 80% increase in value. This is the highest amount invested in the history of the State. This increase has been largely driven by enterprise expenditure growth, from €1.8 billion in 2011 to €3.9 billion in 2021.
It should be noted that in international comparison tables such as this IMD report, the metric used is overall private and public research investment as a percentage of GDP. A key challenge that we face when being compared to other advanced economies is that Ireland’s increases in R&I investment are not keeping pace with the economic growth that has propelled us to second in the 2023 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking.
It is for this reason that Impact 2030: Ireland’s Research and Innovation Strategy has set the goal of increasing R&I investment to 2.5% of GNI* by 2030. GNI* considers the overall economic performance of Ireland whose economy includes substantial foreign investment. It is designed to exclude globalisation effects that are disproportionally impacting the measurement of the size of the Irish economy. Using this measure, Ireland’s research intensity level was estimated at 2% of GNI* in 2021. The EU average was 2.26% of GDP in 2021 (provisional).
Notwithstanding the highly competitive global environment, Impact 2030 will sustain and improve our internationally recognised R&I system, addressing any identified gaps emerging relative to competitors and leveraging our own particular strengths in order to position Ireland as a centre of R&I excellence and impact.
However, we cannot be complacent. Failing to keep pace with other small, advanced economies in terms of investment in R&I represents a significant risk to the competitiveness of our economy, to our labour market productivity, to the growth of high-value employment, to our attractiveness to FDI and to our global standing as a ‘strong innovator’.
Our standings in the other scientific concentration indicators will be improved over the lifetime of the strategy. Impact 2030 and the White Paper on Enterprise commit to increasing the number of researchers from 9.52 per 1,000 in the labour force to 15 per 1,000 by 2030. Also in development as part of Impact 2030's first Work Programme from 2022-2024 is an infrastructure investment framework to identify ready-to-go projects, thereby optimising any agreed re-allocation of NDP underspends to R&I funding. To begin this work, SFI, in partnership with DFHERIS and the HEA, has undertaken an independent policy evaluation to: (a) evaluate the performance of SFI's research infrastructure investment programmes from 2015-2021 and recommend opportunities for improvement; and (b) recommend future national mechanisms to invest in research infrastructure, to include an landscape analysis on which to base potential investment scenario recommendations. This evaluation was completed and published in 2022, and work continues in this area.
Ireland also performs well internationally with respect to female researchers as a percentage of total researchers in the Higher Education sector. Ireland has been steadily moving up in the last ten years, ranking 8th out of 31 OECD countries in 2020. In total, 50% of research staff in the Higher Education sector and 43% of research staff in the Government sector are women. This contrasts with the Business Sector where women accounted for 27% of R&D Personnel. Enterprise Ireland’s 2020 Action Plan for Women in Business aims to improve female representation through funding calls targeting women entrepreneurs, and women researchers from third level institutions. In 2012, just 8 out of 97 participating high potential start-ups (HPSU) were female-led (8%) which has increased to 37% in 2022, when 34 of the 91 participating in the programme were female led.
