Louise O'Reilly
Question:243. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the cost of increasing the Innovation Voucher Scheme to €10,000. [34328/23]
View answerTuesday, 11 July 2023
Questions (243, 244)
Louise O'Reilly
Question:244. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the cost of increasing funding for the innovation voucher scheme by 50%. [34329/23]
View answerWritten answers
I propose to take Questions Nos. 243 and 244 together.
The Innovation Voucher Programme is funded by my Department, through Enterprise Ireland.
The Innovation Voucher Programme provides €5,000 vouchers to encourage companies and public knowledge providers to work together on specific innovation questions and projects related to a company’s needs. The nature of these projects will be such that they transfer knowledge that is new, thereby enabling a company to use this newly acquired knowledge to innovate a product, production process or service.
The Innovation Voucher Programme budget outturn for 2022 was €1,898,526 which comes from capital expenditure. Based on the 2022 outturn data, a doubling of the value of innovation vouchers to €10,000 could increase the expenditure in the region of €3,797,052. It should be noted that this is very much a basic estimation as it cannot account for companies applying for potentially fewer vouchers of €10,000 rather than multiple vouchers of €5,000.
It should also be noted that the data on innovation vouchers is collated on the basis of when the voucher was redeemed, rather than the date of issue. Therefore, doubling or increasing the budget for innovation vouchers will only have impact if the companies have projects to this value and will only be counted on redemption of the vouchers. The vouchers are not cash grants, but are redeemed with a Research Performing Organisation, such as a Technological University, by the company for a specific project.
If the overall funding for the voucher was increased by 50%; based on the figure of €1,898,526 for the budget outturn in 2022, the cost of the increase would be €949,263, giving a total cost for the programme of €2,847,789.
Question No. 244 answered with Question No. 243.